I am upgrading windows 11 home to windows 11 pro using DVD. During set up windows needs drivers

[BallHill]

I am trying updrage from win 11 home to win 11 pro using a DVD.

Windows ask where I should install it Win 11 pro and says there is no HD disk. It says load the drivers for your HD disk, but the HP website doesn’t appear to have the drivers i needs.

HP laptop pc d2000 (2D127AV).

in the bios the NVMe disk isn’t listed, but windows boot manager is.

It likes like i need to copy some driver to a usb stick for this stage, but i cant find the driver.

please help 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You cannot clean install W11 Pro because the W11 Home product key in the PC's BIOS trumps any other key that you have, and you will only end up with W11 Home again.

See the info at the link below for how to upgrade from W11 Home to W11 Pro.

Upgrade Windows Home to Windows Pro - Microsoft Support

Should you ever need to clean install W11, you should be able to use the storage controller drivers that I zipped up and attached below for Windows to find the drive.

[BallHill]

Hi Paul

Thanks for coming back to me - much appreciated.

I am trying to do a clean install of Win 11 Pro.

WIth your drivers, I did manage to get to the partitions, but then it wouldn’t install on any of the partitions. So, thinking I had a usable driver, I deleted all the partitions to get a completely clean install. Then I tried again, and now your drivers no longer works. I now have no operating system and no obvious way to install one. I think It must be a driver issue with the NVMe card. I can see the Samsung SSD (NVMe type) in the bios, but when I try to select it as boot device, it isn’t listed. An empty boot manager, USB and CD are listed. So i can boot from a CD or USB, but there is nowhere for the windows file to install to.

I am a little bit stuck what to do next. I have seen this sort of issue when setting up RAID controllers, but I am new to NVMe SSDs.

Please help!

Many thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

That's not good.

Other than using the HP cloud recovery tool to create a bootable USB recovery drive to reinstall the original factory image, see if the driver I posted in the discussion at the link below works.

Solved: Win 10 install not recognizing the NVME - HP Support Community - 8510047

If you are successful with installing W11 with the DVD, you are going to get W11 Home.

You'll see.

[BallHill]

Hi Paul

is there any way I can install windows 11 pro on this machine?

I seem to be stuck in a loop. I can get the drivers to work if I use media creation tool - but that takes me back to windows 11 home. If I try my DVD, none of the drivers (for the NVMe) work.

When I have got your driver to work, it won’t allow windows to be installed on the partitions it has just created. It seems perfectly designed to thwart me.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, as I had originally posted, you follow the upgrade guidance from Microsoft for how to upgrade to W11 Pro.

If you currently have W11 Home installed, have your W11 Pro product key available.

1. Select Start > Settings > System > Activation.

2. Select Change product key, and then enter the 25-character Windows 11 Pro product key.

3. Select Next to start the upgrade to Windows 11 Pro.

[BallHill]

Hi Paul

When I try the activation route, it won’t accept my win 11 pro key.

Are you saying I have to buy win 11 pro again???

Many thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I suggest you contact Microsoft support for activation assistance.

Contact Us - Microsoft Support

If you have a valid W11 Pro product key, it should have activated.

The problem you have is as I wrote earlier.

Since there is a W11 Home product key in the BIOS, no matter what you do, you will get a W11 Home installation and the only way to upgrade to W11 Pro is to change the product key.

That is why it is recommended to purchase a product key from the Microsoft store during the upgrade process.

Why the W11 product key you have doesn't work unfortunately, that I do not know.