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I am expecting to receive a new Windows 11 Home laptop that I would like to join to a company Azure Active Directory, and log in with a corporate account.

I understand that Windows 11 Home does not support Azure AD join, but I have a Windows 11 Pro key available.

I know that I can sign in with a personal Microsoft account (or create a local account), upgrade windows, join the device to AD and then switch to logging in with a corporate account. I would like to know:

Is it possible to achieve the same without needing to sign-in with a non-corporate account or create a new local account?

In the OOBE, you can press SHIFT-F10 to open a console. I believe that Changepk.exe can be used to upgrade from Home to Pro given the right key. Will this work from the command line in the OOBE? It would save a lot of faff with unnecessary local accounts.

DaveF
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2 Answers2

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Your plan works fine, essential do this:

  1. Choose language, keyboard layout, device name etc.

  2. Once you hit the login screen, press F10 to open CMD. Technically you can open CMD while it's installing Updates but I don't recommend this because it will restart without warning and might interrupt the following process.

  3. Run slui.exe /upk. This is not always necessary but I suspect sometimes the Home license will be installed and needs to be removed first. Doesn't hurt to do anyway.

  4. Run changepk.exe /ProductKey <Your product Key> It will say it failed but ignore it.

  5. Restart

  6. It's now Windows 11 Pro.

I installed Windows 11 Home into a Virtual Machine and tested this using the Generic Keys from this website, this is what I found to get to the steps above:

  • Running changepk.exe /ProductKey VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T (Key for Windows 11 Pro) brought up the "Preparing for Upgrade" dialogue but then failed with Error Code 0x80070490

Windows Upgrading

Failed to Upgrade Error Code 0x80070490

  • I also tried slmgr.vbs /ipk VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T. This errored with 0xC004F069 and said to run SLUI to get full details. enter image description here

  • I ran slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F069 and it said enter image description here

  • However, I then ran slui.exe /upk to uninstall the Product Key, and then tried changepk.exe again, after rebooting the OOBE was now for Windows 11 Pro and I could create a local user and domain join. CMD showing windows version to be 11 Pro. Windows 11 Pro signup page.

Baa
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  • You can also modify the contents of ..\sources\ei.cfg the ISO, to indicate it's a RETAIL channel and Professional edition, allowing you to enter your Windows 11 Professional key during the installation process. This will bypass the automatic discovery of the Windows 11 Home OEM license that normally would be detected during the setup process. This comment is an alternative solution if you were to ever reinstall the OS. There is a file you can also specify the key, but the name escapes me at the moment – Ramhound Aug 02 '22 at 15:43
  • I needed to use "slmgr /upk" instead of slui to remove the license. Also, it seems that using a PRO volume license did not work, whereas a retail key worked. – mnkypete Oct 18 '22 at 17:02
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    For those who already have an active installation (post OOBE), I just ran slui.exe /upk, followed by changepk.exe /ProductKey VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T, and Windows automically started the upgrade from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro. (For reference, I had activated Win 11 Home using HWID activation using Microsoft Activation Scripts on github, for free, than later sometime ran above said commands. If above fails, try activating first using HWID method using Microsoft Activation Scripts) – Anirudh Gupta Apr 09 '23 at 13:49
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I wanted to add a note to the above answer. For many, they will have to press shift+f10 and maybe shift+fn+f10 to get the CMD to pop up. I don't have enough points to comment on amazing answer by Baa.

I want to thank you. I work for a small business. Well, not super small anymore, we have 80 employees now. But we were only 4 3 years ago. I buy computers mostly from Costco on sale and so they always have Windows Home. I have had to go through the steps of creating either a MS account user or local user in setup and then do the migration to Pro inside of windows. I had to install a bunch of software first too. Your trick really saved me a ton of time. I am so grateful!!! I am going to be using this trick for years to come. I setup 5-10 computers a month. We have pro keys but honestly it was more work entering them than your quick trick. I built an Azure active directory and use intune to keep all the computers organized. Your method instantly adds the new computer to my dashboard. This process took so much work before.

Also, I never saw an error screen, it just worked. So much quicker! Thanks so much!!!

Joshua Awesome - Kindly Thrive
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