Windows 7 Professional Key vs Upgrade Key question [SOLVED]

[Spuds725]

This is what I hope is a relatively easy question but I haven't been able to find the answer to on my own.

 

I have a desktop PC that came pre-installed with Windows 7 home premium.

 

About 6 months after purchasing ( in Sept 2012) I used the windows anytime upgrade option and upgraded to windows 7 professional.

 

Last week my PC crashed and I was unable to get back into windows-- so I used the recovery disks I created when I purchased the PC to return the PC to factory state and it is working just fine. I did the new install onto a new Hard drive so as to preserve the data on the old hard drive.

 

Since I used the recovery disks, it restored the PC to Windows 7 home premium.

 

I have searched all of mine and my wife's email accounts and I am unable to find an email from microsoft that had my upgrade key-- I was able to find the credit card charge for it so I know the exact date I purchased it.

 

I looked online and was able to find a program that was able to extract the windows 7 professional key from the old hard drive--

 

I used Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v2.0.10.10 (this is for anyone that might search and find this thread)-- to search a second hard drive on the system you have to run the program as Administrator.

 

So anyway-- I tried going back to the windows anytime upgrade page on my PC and tried entering the key found on the old hard drive and I get a message saying that the key is invalid.

 

I did verify that the extracted key was NOT the license key for my Home premium version that came with the PC.....

 

So my question is-- does anyone know if the license key that I found should be the same as the upgrade key??

 

Here is a screenie of the keyfinder (I erased the last 20 digits of the key found).

 

post images

[Ryan]

I'd suggest you call Microsoft about the issue. They'll be able to help you much better than we can here.

[Spuds725]

Before I was able to recover the key- I did... They referred me to the email I wasn't able to find-- Their online chat was quite painful-- they go out of their way to be ultra polite and in doing so seem to keep sidestepping questions... I will if nobody knows the answer.

[Spuds725]

Bumpdate--

 

I had previously looked online for a solution and came across this thread which was the exact problem I had--http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/348667-how-recover-win7-pro-upgrade-win7-home-premium-post-hdd-crash.html

 

This post

 

 

 

copy the SOFTWARE file (no extension) to desktop

NirSoft ProduKey

ProduKey - Recover lost product key (CD-Key) of Windows/MS-Office/SQL Server

Download the zip, extract it to temp location, desktop maybe. Right click the exe and run as admin. Once application opens, go to File->Select Source(F9) and check "Load the Product Keys from external Software Registry Hive, and browse to where you put the old SOFTWARE hive.

Produkey will search the hive for keys(Windows, Office) and show you the key. Find the one listed as Windows 7 Professional and copy it to text document.

There should be your working key from previous installation. Then opening Windows Anytime Upgrade in your start menu and entering that key should allow the OS to upgrade itself to Windows 7 Pro, or whatever the key is active for.

This apeared to be a solution but I went to that page and the keyfinder program I found cost $25 -- the trial would display the first 5 digits of the key (which were the same as the one I found with the above program)-- so I assumed it were correct....

I went back to the linked to page and found this program near the bottom of the page... http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/produkey.zip(this was what the quoted post was referring to, not the paid program).

Running this program on the old registry following the exact directions above got me this key...

Which as you can see is different from the one above--- (I once again erased the last 20 digits of the key)-- Entering that key into the windows anytime upgrade worked perfectly... the upgrade went fine and I am now running the Windows 7 pro version that I paid for.

I did find it odd that the internet explorer key it found was the same as the upgrade key.

Anyway... thanks for everyone that looked at this thread-- leaving this up for anyone else that might encounter this problem... Do yourself a favor and safe guard your product keys.

Spuds