
I could verify that by going into Win-I (i.e., Settings) > System > About.
This step gave me a Windows 10 Pro 21H2 installation on the laptop. I wasn’t sure if this was still an issue, or if a more recent drive image (e.g., from the preceding day) would suffice. The desktop image I chose to restore was about a month old.
That would risk putting me back where I started, with an older Windows installation that refused to upgrade. But I didn’t want an image that was too old to have Win10 21H2. (Before overwriting, make a backup image of the operating system (OS) installation on the target machine also, use something like Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder to save activation codes for the OS and licensed software on the target machine.) The last time around (see previous post), it seemed that I had to use a drive image of a system that had not been updated as recently as the Windows 10 ISO that I would soon be downloading (below).
Using AOMEI (or whatever tool you prefer), I made an image of drive C: on the desktop (source machine), and restored it to the laptop, overwriting whatever was previously on drive C on the laptop. As a good start, this would be the time to back up anything I didn’t want to lose on the laptop. My steps (based on Brink’s tutorial at TenForums, with links to his other tutorials along the way) were as follows: Thus, the desktop (i.e., Win10 Pro 圆4 21H2) machine was the source machine for this project, and the laptop (which, at the start of this effort, was running Win10 Home 圆4 1909) was the target. It also had some other improvements that I wanted to see on the laptop. The desktop had made that transition to 21H2. In this regard, the situation was similar to that which I had recently encountered when trying to upgrade a Windows To Go drive. I was doing this because, for some reason, the laptop was not upgrading to the Win10 21H2 (i.e., autumn 2021) version. The present post offers a summary, clarification, and update of the process. The mission here was to clone the Win10 Pro installation from desktop to laptop, and then downgrade the latter so that Microsoft would activate it as a legitimate Win10 Home installation.Ī previous post describes, in more detail, how I did it last time. I wanted that same installation on my laptop.
I had spent a lot of time installing and configuring the system and its programs. I had Windows 10 Pro installed on my desktop.