Upgrading from Windows 7 home premium

Question

I'm trying to secure a public computer that's running Windows 7 Home Premium (see How to secure a public computer? for other discussion). Unfortunately it turns out that Windows Home Premium doesn't have gpedit.msc. :(

I don't think there's any way of running gpedit.msc on Home Premium. I have a key for Windows 7 Business edition, however, that I could use.

Can I simply change the product key to a Business key? If so, will that work? Will Windows 7 just upgrade itself automatically for me?

Answer 1

This is not possible.

You will either need to use a Windows Anytime Upgrade key or perform a fresh installation.

There is no business edition of Windows 7 - it could either be a Vista Bussiness key you have or a Windows 7 Enterprise.

Answer 2

No, most likely it will not accept the Pro key, you either need to do the actual upgrade or clean reinstall of Pro. Keys are matched to the version of W7, they cannot be swapped.

W7 does not have a Business version like Vista did, they went back to the Pro label.