Hack to In-Place “Downgrade” from Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional to Less Premium Editions

Windows 7 does not allow users to “downgrade” or convert from a more premium and more expensive edition to down-level, more basic and less expensive edition. For example, it’s impossible to downgrade from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional or Enterprise, or from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 7 Home Premium or Home Basic.

Windows 7 SKUs or editions have a hierarchy as below:

Starter -> Home Basic -> Home Premium -> Professional -> Ultimate

Upgrade is only possible one-way from the lower edition to higher edition of Windows 7, and not the other way round. If user attempts to perform an in-place upgrade to downgrade to lesser edition of Windows 7, an error similar to below will be displayed at compatibility report:

Windows 7 Ultimate cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium. You can choose to install a new copy of Windows 7 Home Premium instead, but this is different from an upgrade, and does not keep your files, settings and programs. You’ll need to reinstall any programs using the original installation discs or files. To save your files before installing Windows, back them up to an external location such as a CD, DVD, or external hard drive. To install a new copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, click the Back button in the upper left-hand corner, and select “Custom (advanced)”.

Windows 7 Cannot Downgrade or Convert to Lesser Edition

The refusal of Windows 7 to downgrade causes several groups of people some headache, especially when user doesn’t want to lose and wipe off existing programs installed. For example, users who installed Windows 7 Ultimate during beta or release candidate phase of Windows 7, but now acquire a Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional license. The situation can also apply to user who installs Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional edition, but now wants to go legit by buying or being given a gift of Windows 7 Home Premium license. End-users also have to go through the hassle of backup all data files when clean install is required.

Microsoft probably forbids downgrade for a reason, such as possibility of corrupting or messing the operating system and complexity involved in such downgrade. For user who must perform in-place downgrade, there is a workaround trick that can force Windows 7 setup installer to allow “upgrade” or downgrade from uplevel edition of Windows 7 to downlevel version of Windows 7, while retaining all installed application software, drivers and migrating all documents, music, video, shortcuts, bookmarks, favorites, and personal data files or settings.

  1. On existing Windows installation, run Registry Editor (RegEdit).
  2. Navigate to the following registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

  3. In the right pane, change the value data of EditionID and ProductName to reflect a minor version of Windows 7.

    For example, to fool OS to think that it’s another edition of Windows 7, hack the registry key to the following values as below:

    Windows 7 Professional Product Name and Edition ID
    Original Windows 7 Ultimate registry value

    Windows 7 Home Premium (allow Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional to Home Premium downgrade)
    EditionID: HomePremium
    ProductName: Windows 7 HomePremium

    Windows 7 Professional (allow Windows 7 Ultimate to Professional downgrade)
    EditionID: Professional
    ProductName: Windows 7 Professional

    Windows 7 Home Premium Product ID

    Note: The ProductName and EditionID should have the same name with the Windows 7 operating system name displayed during OS selection on the installation DVD. Some Windows 7 installation DVD may use “Windows 7 Home Premium” as OS name. See the hack to enable Windows 7 OS edition selection during setup by disabling ei.cfg to create universal Windows 7 installer ISO.

  4. Start Windows 7 installation by inserting Windows 7 DVD disc into disc tray, or mount the Windows 7 ISO image into a virtual drive.
  5. Select Upgrade as type of installation. Then, continue to install Windows 7 as per normal.

For user who decided to upgrade from Windows 7 Beta or Windows 7 RC release, the Windows 7 upgrade paths also does not support direct upgrade any prerelease versions of Windows 7. However, an easy hack of modifying cversion.ini can enable direct upgrade to Windows 7 final from Windows 7 RC or Beta.

One last note is that after the “downgrade” of Windows 7 installation, the operating system must be reactivated.


10 Responses to “Hack to In-Place “Downgrade” from Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional to Less Premium Editions”

  1. Phreak
    November 20th, 2009 08:55
    10

    Worked PERFECTLY upgrading from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Home Premium. You da Man!

  2. anonymous
    November 15th, 2009 10:34
    9

    thanks.

    Your steps worked fine.
    I was getting so stressed with this problem after upgrading using the msdn dvd and not being able to downgrade.

    The weird thing is that i dont recall entering a key during the msdn upgrade, and for some reason the upgrade took me from vista oem home premium to ultimate(not home premium)… but then no way to go back to oem home premium win7 when i finally got the dvd upgrade from the manufacturer. what a waste of time…

  3. ddk
    November 11th, 2009 13:49
    8

    pyro42, yes it does work downgrading vista business to w7 home premium. I just did it, had no problems at all and days later I detect no issues.

    I used:
    EditionID: HomePremium
    ProductName: Windows 7 HomePremium

  4. Fagin
    November 9th, 2009 23:26
    7

    Worked perfectly for me.

    I went from Windows 7 v7100 (evaluation version) to Windows 7 Home Premium using the Registry and cversion.ini tricks. I used a Windows 7 upgrade disk that I got free from Microsoft when I purchased an OEM copy of Vista home Premium. I now have a fully working, validated W7 Home Premium instalation.

  5. Kim Jong ill
    November 5th, 2009 16:11
    6

    I’m going to be trying this with Vista ultimate > Windows 7 upgrade soon, I’ll post the results here when/if it works.

  6. jarod1701
    November 5th, 2009 03:55
    5

    FYI: Technically Enterprise is just the same as Ultimate. Licensing model is the only difference.

  7. mustafa
    November 4th, 2009 21:56
    4

    it also works professional -> ultimate upgrade

    i tried with an image of win7 and it didnt give an error

  8. Dmitry
    November 4th, 2009 06:44
    3

    OK, I figured out what as the problem. There’s a vital note: for Home Premium version only ProductName should have space between words. EditionID MUST be written in one word. So the final edit is the following:

    EditionID: HomePremium
    ProductName: Windows 7 Home Premium

  9. Dmitry
    November 4th, 2009 04:53
    2

    Didn’t work for me. It still says I have Ultimate and it can’t be upgraded to Home Premium.

    Currently I have Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7100 (RC).

  10. pyro42
    November 4th, 2009 02:36
    1

    what are the chances of this working to inplace downgrade from windows vista business to windows 7 home premium?

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Subscribe to comments feature has been disabled. To receive notification of latest comments posted, subscribe to My Digital Life Comments RSS feed or register to receive new comments in daily email digest.
Custom Search

New Articles

Incoming Search Terms for the Article

downgrade windows 7 ultimate to professional - downgrade windows 7 ultimate - downgrade windows 7 ultimate to home premium - windows 7 downgrade ultimate to professional - windows 7 enterprise hack - windows 7 ultimate downgrade - downgrade from windows 7 ultimate to professional - windows 7 ultimate to professional downgrade - windows 7 ultimate downgrade to professional - convert windows 7 ultimate to professional - all - downgrade windows 7 ultimate to windows 7 professional - downgrade windows 7 professional to home premium - downgrade windows 7 - windows 7 downgrade - windows 7 ultimate to professional - downgrade ultimate to professional - windows 7 ultimate downgrade to home premium - convert windows 7 ultimate to home premium - m - windows 7 enterprise downgrade - windows 7 downgrade to home premium - Windows 7 ultimate cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Professional - windows 7 enterprise to home premium downgrade - windows 7 registration hack - downgrade from windows 7 ultimate to windows 7 professional - windows 7 home premium hack - windows 7 hacks - downgrade windows 7 ultimate professional - how to downgrade Windows 7 ultimate to professional - downgrade from ultimate to professional - downgrading windows 7 to home premium - downgrade windows 7 ultimate to enterprise - 'EditionID' and 'ProductName' - downgrade Win 7 ultimate to professional - windows 7 ultimate cannot be upgraded to windows 7 enterprise - downgrading windows 7 ultimate - windows 7 hack - how to downgrade windows 7 professional to home premium - downgrade windows 7 ultimate to basic - convert windows 7 ultimate to enterprise - in-place upgrade from vista ultimate to windows 7 professional - windows 7 professional vs ultimate - convert windows 7 professional to ultimate - windows 7 iso hack - windows 7 home premium downgrade - windows 7 license hack - windows 7 editionid - downgrade windows 7 ultimate to windows 7 home premium - downgrade from windows 7 ultimate to windows 7 home -