Windows 11 Upgrades

Question

I am currently running Windows 10 Enterprise (UK English) on a home PC. It is activated via a Product Key, and the licence is linked to my Microsoft (hotmail) account, which I use to log on. I want to upgrade to Windows 11, but the upgrade has not been offered to me via Windows Update as yet, presumably because I am running an Enterprise version of Windows 10. I have already run the PC Health Check tool and confirmed that the PC meets all the pre-requisites for Windows 11 upgrade.

As the version upgrade is not being offered via Windows Update, I would like to manually update instead, but before I do so I wanted to check a few things:

1. Will my existing Windows 10 Enterprise Activation key work with Windows 11?
2. If not, can I skip the step of specifying the activation key and rely on Windows 11 automatically activating itself when I log on using my Microsoft account with the linked Windows 10 licence?
3. Does UK English require using the Win11_EnglishInternational_x64v1.iso or the Win11_English_x64v1.iso?
4. As an alternative to using the appropriate .iso file for a clean install and/or update, can I use the Windows11InstallationAssistant.exe or MediaCreationToolW11.exe instead?

Can you please help and advise on the best approach?

Thanks in advance

Geoff Sullivan

Answer 1

Hi Geoff

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

The upgrade to Windows 11 is a one for one upgrade, you will end up with the the exact same edition (Home, Pro...etc)

However, you have the Enterprise edition of Windows 10, that is a volume licence version of Windows, is that licence associated to a work account and if so, do you have an IT department?

Answer 2

To upgrade an existing win10 sys to win 11, even if the sys passes health check requires not least editing Bios settings, Secure Boot, TPM, convert MBR to GPT (the latter requires a paid for third party utility)

Download Windows 11 (microsoft.com)