Purchased two Inspiron notebooks for the business, went through the standard settings > activation > windows store to upgrade from Home to Pro. This lovely message appears on both units. (“We’re not sure how you got here, but you can’t buy this version of Windows 10.”)
Current Windows licenses are valid and activated.
Thoughts? Halp? Thank you!
*edited to include onscreen message in body
Can you go to ‘This PC’ > System Properties > Change the product key or upgrade your edition of windows > Change product key.
This should bring up a dialogue box for you to type in a new product key. Then go to one of the many websites that sells you Windows 10 Pro keys for a fraction of the cost.
That’s how I upgraded from Pro to Pro for Workstations.
We don’t allow publicising grey market keys just fyi. You will likely end up with a deactivated OS when Microsoft do the rounds on grey market keys every now and then. This isn’t a good idea.
Also tried that. I have a brand new physical disk with key for Win 10 Pro. Learned my lesson with the last laptop we bought.
Come to find out, Microsoft will not let you upgrade from Home to Pro with a physical key, must be purchased through the Windows Store.
Swapping hard drive and fresh install won’t take either, windows version licensing is stored in Mobo 
Joker recommended a website and I haven’t had any issues but fair play. Sorry.
Hmmm! Attempting this one. Thx!!!
I remember this, he made an extremely bad move that put his audience at risk and ignored anyone who tried to get him to rectify the problem. In some cases grey market keys are fine for years and in others weeks, and i imagine some are fine for ever, but there’s just no way to tell, and all grey market keys are grey market for a reason.
@joshplusua alternatively you should be able to also buy the version you want outside of the OS, from Microsoft or one of their accepted re-sellers and upgrade that way. You can also try and search for windows in the app store directly, but if you’re getting an error it might be an issue that @kewldude007 has pointed out.
Oh, and if you have any already that you aren’t using, or are from decommissioned hardware, i don’t think there is any issue using those, they might require a call though.
Brand new outta the box. Dell customer support was very … supportive? Just handed from agent to agent for a couple hours.
New windows 10 pro key physical disk was purchased through newegg.
Big MS don’t want to play ball today I guess? 
I thought I’d give it a go as the main reason for getting the workstation version was to get rid of all the crap that MS installs (angry bird, amazon, etc.) Assumed as it wasn’t some random eBay seller it would be better but obviously not!
Thanks for pointing this out. If/when something goes wrong I’ll write this one off to experience.
So you can’t use a USB ISO or even an external DVD drive to format the current install and install Pro from fresh on the drive?
Never heard of that one but if you needed pro it would surely have been easier (and cheaper) to just buy the upgrade from Dell when purchasing the laptops?
Negative Ghost Rider. Windows key is stored on Mobo, if I try to install any other version than Home it just don’t.
@raz0rblade
Often, you can buy Win10 pro keys at 50% off on Amazon… Although grey market keys do end up there as well so be careful of what you buy, Newegg is also a pretty solid bet.
Update
Issue appears to be solved.
Dell had kept them in boxes so long, they were running pre-windows 1607. Waited a century for the spinning rust to complete the updates to post-1807, restarted, windows store, upgrade, and done.
Thx! <3
You have to make an image and write the image to the drive you can’t install by normal means.
I thought instead of storing on the mobo, windows just automatically sent the unique hardware identifier to it’s servers on initial install.
Then subsequent installs should go smoother, as you can skip entering the key, and windows will automatically authenticate itself.
