After having such a great time at Build I felt it was time to upgrade my work laptop to Windows 8. Previously, however, I had Windows 7 Ultimate and when I tried to upgrade to Windows 8 Enterprise the installer told me I could not do so: “Windows 7 Ultimate cannot be upgraded to Windows 8 Enterprise.” The natural path is to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro but I specifically wanted Enterprise since that was what we have at work and for the ability to side-load Windows Store apps (though maybe Pro can do this as well).
Anyway, just by luck I happened upon a post about a very similar problem going from Vista to Windows 7 Enterprise … same issue. The fix? Totally stupid … really.
- Close the Windows 8 installer if you have it open and
- Launch RegEdit to edit the registry
- Find the following branch: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version
- Edit the following keys:
- EditionId – Change from “Ultimate” to “Enterprise”
- ProductName – Change from “Windows 7 Ultimate” to “Windows 7 Enterprise”
Now the in-place upgrade will run just fine.
Jason Agostoni 
thank you!
very thanks good luck
this doesnt work
Someone here could help you out if you gave one or two details. This has worked for several people so something is most likely different. Maybe Microsoft updated their installer.
Doesnt work for me….I’m on 32Bit installer and doesnt work for me…Microsoft has updated their installer…if you could help it would be great chrisdevic@gmail.com
Unfortunately, I haven’t tried upgrading anything recently so I don’t know what else I would have tried. Of note, the versions I was working with were all 64bit … perhaps something could be different in 32 bit? Or maybe the registry key is in a different place?
Worked fine for me
did not work for me too
Any more details you are willing to provide to help others?
I also tried this. Windows 7 Ultimate 64. The in-place upgrade had already been attempted before I flipped the tags. When I flipped them and closed regedit, the in-place upgrade still did not work. So I reopened regedit to confirm my changes and they were still there. Following that, I restarted my machine. Might as well be sure. The changes were still there. But the installer still thinks I am Windows 7 Ultimate.
This is with and without allowing it to connect for its quick 451k update to the installer. This is also coming from a mounted ISO (used different drive-letters to test), as opposed to a DVD. I suppose one workaround would be to burn the DVD, but I haven’t gotten that desperate yet.
Now then…I hadn’t run Windows Update since February (oops), so I ran it. Still no dice. Hope that helps.
Thanks for the details. I just wonder if some update along the way “patched” this.
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“worked”, not exactly. Going from 7 Ultimate to 8.1 Enterprise with this trick resulted in the same failure. Technically the upgrade would work (but it would without the hack too) but I get to keep “Personal files only” either way which isn’t a successful upgrade to me since I’d have to re-install everything.
Currently trying: http://rollyperreaux.com/how-to-upgrade-from-windows-7-ultimate-to-windows-8-enterprise-step-by-step/
You can’t go directly 7 to 8.1 and retain applications, it’s not an upgrade path Microsoft supports. You must fist go to 8.0 then you can go to 8.1.