Windows 7 Downgrading from Pro to Home Premium

[felixedo]

I am moving computers. My current laptop came with Win 7 Home Premium and I purchased the upgrade to Pro. I want to use the the upgrade on my new laptop, which also came with Home Premium. I have learned from other threads that Microsoft is cooperative with this move. My question concerns laptop #1. To keep it legal I need to go back to Home Premium. Can I do this without a complete restore to original, wiping out all intalled programs?

Thanks.

 

[Firecracker]

When you do an upgrade you get the key which unlocks the professional version (NO MATTER which version of windows you get, you really end up with Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate of one of two 32bit or 64bit). if you get Windows 7 home premium you really have Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 ultimate it's on all the versions disk's and gets installed, but only Windows 7 Home Premium gets installed with that key, if you want Ultimate, buy the key online and change product keys which unlocks Ultimate. So now how long since you up graded? can you do a system restore to before you unlocked Professional? or otherwise you can only Burn and start again, losing everything. But you can just change hard disks and reativate on the other computers.

 

[felixedo]

Thanks for the reply. The upgrade was too long ago to be practical to do a system restore at the restore point. Actually, what I was hoping is it possible to enter a downgrade "key", in the same manner as one would enter an upgrade key in the "Windows Anytime Upgrade" section of the Control Panel. Just disabling the additional features that the upgrade unlocked. This would allow me to keep the rest of the system in tact.

 

[unawave]

With a change of a registry key you can fake a minor version - so you can install the minor version. See Link Removed.

 

[felixedo]

Thank you. It seems a little risky for me, but that is the information I needed.