Tonight I upgraded my laptop from “Windows 7 Professional” to “Windows 7 Ultimate”. I was one of the first people to be downloading Windows 7 from Microsoft on the day Windows 7 was posted to Technet. I downloaded the “ultimate” ISO but I never generated my Software Key for “ultimate”. A Few hours after I started downloading the ISO I went back to the Technet site to find out I could no longer generate the keys. Only Windows 7 Professional was able to be generated.
A week or so later Microsoft turned on the ability to generate the keys again. I wasn’t sure how hard it was going to be to “upgrade” windows to another version so I never looked into any further. I knew from Windows Vista that “Upgrade Anytime” wasn’t really “upgrade anytime”!
Tonight I wanted to try bitlocker so I needed to upgrade the OS. (Read more about Bitlocker). Here’s the steps on how to perform the upgrade very quickly. I believe there are about 2 reboots required. So make sure that you have all programs closed and if you are using a laptop please make sure that it is plugged in.
Go to START – and type “Upgrade Anytime” in the search box.
Tell it to upgrade the software and that you have a key for the new version.
Enter the key and hit upgrade.
Your machine will reboot at least twice.
When it reboots you will be up to date.
You will also need to activate your copy of Windows even if you had activated the software before.
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