Hi ladies and gents,
My main workstation at work runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. I recently installed an additional 16GB of RAM to bring it up to 32GB, and of course it will only recognize the first 16GB. I run lots of engineering, graphics and development tools on this machine so I really want to make use of the other 16GB, but I don't know if several of the programs I run are even compatible with Windows 10, and some of my programs are mission critical and I can't really risk taking a chance.
It burns my butt that I can use the ADA workaround to get Win10 for free at any moment, yet I'd have to pay $140 at Amazon/Newegg to buy Win7 Pro just to upgrade, especially since Microsoft is basically discontinuing support for Win7 as fast as they can. It burns my butt even more that I bought my copy of Win 7 Home Premium and I also own a copy of Win 7 Professional that I no longer use, but I cannot upgrade using the Professional CD key, because it is an OEM version and my Home Pro is a Retail version and it will not let me upgrade the Retail version using the OEM Professional CD key.
I also think perhaps I would be better off (if possible) upgrading to Win7 Enterprise.
I've been out of the network administration/IT guy business for 15+ years now. So other than biting the bullet and paying $140 for something I already own, or doing a clean install with the Win 7 Pro OEM version and spending a day re-installing all my software, or taking a huge risk and upgrading to Win10 and trying to find compatibility workarounds for my unsupported engineering tools, or taking a risk that someone on eBay ISN'T scamming me with a fake CD key that will stop working within a few days or a few months, is there any way for me to upgrade this Windows 7 Home Premium desktop machine to Windows 7 Enterprise (ideally) or if not, to Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 7 Professional without having to drop the $140?
Thanks for any help 