Inplace Upgrade Helper is an open source tool designed to help Windows users move between different Windows 10 and 11 editions.
The Windows edition, e.g., Home or Pro, determines whether certain features are available or not. A common example is that Home editions lack access to the Group Policy Editor.
Windows includes options to switch editions. In best case, all you need to do is open Settings > System > Activation, click on the “change” button next to Change product key, and type or paste the new key.
This process works well when you upgrade from a less expensive version. Upgrades from Home to Pro should work this way. You may still run into issues sometimes. While this happens often when you downgrade Windows to another edition, e.g., from Pro to Home, it is not uncommon that you run into issues when you try to upgrade the edition.
Inplace Upgrade Helper
Inplace Upgrade Helper supports all major versions of Windows and many special editions. Besides Home and Pro, it also supports Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise, Windows 11 SE CloudEdition, or Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021.
The open source tool includes four different methods to change editions in Windows 10 and 11. These are:
- Using slmgr.
- Running an in-place upgrade using setup.exe.
- Running an in-place upgrade of any edition of Windows. This method blocks any “firmware-embedded keys” of the current edition.
- Running a forced in-place upgrade to keep all apps and settings.
While that may sound complicated, it is not really. All you need to do download Windows installation media and extract it on the local system. You may use WinRAR for that or most file archivers.
Download the latest version of the Inplace Upgrade Helper tool and place it in the same directory as setup.exe.
Right-click on Inplace_Upgrade_Helper.bat and select “run as administrator” to start it.
From there it is just a matter of selecting the desired edition, e.g., 2 for Pro, and then the upgrade method, e.g., f for forcing the upgrade or k for trying to install the update using slmgr.
As always, it is recommended to create a backup of the system drive before you make any changes to the operating system.
Note that the tool does not activate Windows. It merely switches the edition.
Closing words
Trying Windows’ built-in option to change the key and edition is the best option if you upgrade from Home to Pro. The open source tool may be useful if you run into issues when you try to switch editions.
Now You: which edition of Windows do you run, if any? (via Deskmodder)