How to purchase a legitimate Window10 product key to enable upgrade to Windows 11

Question

Hi

My daughter was given a laptop by a former employer when the (small) company she worked for was dissolved. This laptop had windows 10 pro installed as an operating system. She has updated to windows 11pro but can't activate it as the previous windows 10 licence product key is an enterprise (digital?) edition managed by the former employers server which is no longer up and running and the various licences were not deactivated.

She has no problem paying for a legitimate Windows 10 licence and then upgrading to Windows 11 please advise about the best way to do this (Sorry we are not very techy)

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Chris,

If she was using Windows 10 Enterprise, she can only upgrade it to Windows 11 Enterprise NOT Windows 11 pro as that will not accept the old license. Please ensure that when we upgrade any machine from Windows 10 to Windows 11, we should install the same version to avoid license conflicts. If the old license was valid, it doesn't matter it her old company was dissolved/closed or not, the license should still be active.

On the other hand, we can purchase Windows 10/11 license from Microsoft Store using any device. However, please ensure that you use a Microsoft account to sign in to 'Microsoft store'.

Please update with your findings!

Sincerely,

CK