Fresh install on new laptop w/Win10-Home

nkaufman said:

How would I go about finding out if Lenovo has put the key in bios?

Run showkeyplus from this forum:
Showkey - Windows 10 Forums

nkaufman said:

upgrade from Win-10 Home to Win-10 Pro using generic key
then try and use Win-7Pro key to activate Win-10Pro.
download win-10 Pro from Tech Bench

Those steps are correct.

nkaufman said:

Get my Win-10Pro key using showkeyplus. this would be my official key now

Nope. Your Windows 10 Pro product key will be the generic product key already given in this thread. After you activate an upgrade from Windows 7 once on this computer, the digital entitlement for Windows 10 Pro for that computer will be stored on Microsoft activation servers and the generic key will be used to both install (or upgrade) Windows 10 Pro and to activate it by retrieving the digital entitlement from Microsoft activation servers.

nkaufman said:

Modify as per - Windows Setup Edition Configuration and Product ID Files (EI.cfg and PID.txt). Looked at this link and see "The product key in the product ID file is only used to install Windows. This key is not used to activate Windows". what does this mean?

Optional, if you want to. (and only do the PID.txt file part) Otherwise just install home and use the generic Pro product key to upgrade to Pro. The upgrade to Pro only adds features to Home, so it will remain just as much a clean install as if you installed Pro from the start. The generic product, by itself, won't activate Windows 10 - that will happen by Windows 10 retrieving the digital entitlement from Microsoft activation servers.

nkaufman said:

Wipe out the HDD (removing all partitions etc)
install Win-10Pro again (PID.txt - my Win-10Pro official key) with separate OS and Data partitions etc.

Correct, except that it is the Windows 10 Pro generic product key that would go in the PID.txt file.

nkaufman said:

Now, would be stuck only if win-7 Pro is not accepted to activate Win-10Pro but will look at it at that time.

Correct. And there would be a possible fix for that if it should be rejected - but you would have to install Windows 7 Pro and activate it first. But let's hope the Windows 7 product key is accepted. Also, make sure you are on windows 10 version 1511, build 10586.xx (also known as the November update). That's the only version that will accept Windows 7 product keys. Build 10240 will not.

Hello,

Thank you for your response.

Attached is the screenshot of ShowKeyPlus. So it seems Lenovo has the key in bios.

So, basically i'm stuck with generic key if I need to do a fresh install in future.

I'd always thought that any machine (with Win-7) can use windows updates to upgrade to Win-10 and that there was a way to get the key assigned to that machine so that one could do a fresh install of Win-10 if needed. Maybe I misunderstood this.

Thanks again for clarifying.

nkaufman said:

I'd always thought that any machine (with Win-7) can use windows updates to upgrade to Win-10 and that there was a way to get the key assigned to that machine so that one could do a fresh install of Win-10 if needed. Maybe I misunderstood this.

When you upgrade from Windows 7/8/8.1 you get a digital entitlement stored on Microsoft activation servers that Windows 10 will retrieve and activate after a fresh install.

Got Win-10 Pro activated using Win-7 Pro license.

What I did was
- In Win-10 Home went to upgrade
- Used generic key to upgrade
- Tried to activate Win-10 Pro using win-7 key but was unsuccessful and after a few tries was resigned to going back to Win-10 Home
- But noticed that upgrade to Win-10 Pro from Win-10 Home didn't upgrade to the required version of Nov 2015
- So did a windows update to latest build
- Then used Win-7 Pro key to activate and it did with message "Digital Entitlement" or something like that.

So, now will do a fresh install using generic key to install Win-10 Pro and hopefully it will get activated based on Digital Entitlement.

Thanks for your assistance on this.

Superfly said:

When installing Pro with a Home OEM key in the firmware make sure you force a Pro install with pid.txt containing the generic Pro key.

Instead, at the prompt when it asks for key, can I not enter the generic Pro key?

Or will the install just pick up the Win-10 home key from bios and will not prompt me to enter a key in which case I have no option but to update pid.txt

Thanks for your input.

NavyLCDR said:

When you upgrade from Windows 7/8/8.1 you get a digital entitlement stored on Microsoft activation servers that Windows 10 will retrieve and activate after a fresh install.

I was successful in doing that.

My laptop with Win-10Home initially is now Win-10 Pro w/digital entitlement.

Thank you for your assistance.

repped you as well

Glad it worked for you! Thanks!