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Is there any difference between:

  • installing Windows Pro from scratch and KMS activating as Enterprise

  • installing Windows Enterprise from scratch and KMS activating as Enterprise

I know that the output of "winver" will be the same (it will be Enterprise). But is there any other difference?

If someone gives me a machine with already installed Windows, can I know (by typing some command into terminal) which version was installed prior to activation?

user3719454
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    Depends on the command their is a single registry key with the information you seek. What problem are you trying to solve exactly? Edit your question instead of submitting a comment – Ramhound Oct 24 '19 at 16:10
  • Possible duplicate: https://superuser.com/questions/1032064/how-do-i-tell-if-windows-10-was-a-fresh-install-or-upgrade-from-7-8/1184670#1184670 – Ramhound Oct 24 '19 at 16:38
  • Possible duplicate of [How to activate Windows 10 Pro without installing previous version first?](https://superuser.com/questions/947461/how-to-activate-windows-10-pro-without-installing-previous-version-first) –  Oct 24 '19 at 18:49

1 Answers1

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KMS activation can truly upgrade Windows Pro to Enterprise and there should not be any operational differences with installing Windows Enterprise from scratch.

To find out if your Windows version is an upgrade, start regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup

If you see there a key named Upgrade, then your installation is an upgrade.

To find out the original version of Windows, you will see one or more "Source OS" subkeys, like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Source OS (Updated on 12/16/2018 14:13:34)

These subkeys contain all the required information:

enter image description here

For more information, see the article
How to determine if a PC has a clean or upgrade installation of Windows 10.

harrymc
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    KMS will change pro to enterprise but there is 1 caveat. A retail or oem license install needs to be converted to a vlk license before it can register with KMS – Tonny Oct 24 '19 at 17:25