New
#21
HP is yanking your chain - the media created using the tool will automatically read the embedded product key
He yanked your chain so far it's 10' longer! The OEM key you see from showkeyplus is from the BIOS/UEFI.... UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a standard firmware interface for PCs, designed to replace BIOS (basic input/output system).
MS assigns a digital key to activate it.
Print that Showkeyplus info and stash it somewhere safe! Cause there's no COA sticker anymore, it's your backup of the keys.....
So everything we discussed previously is still the way to go? Just wipe the damn partition and I can use my burned Win10 DVD to reinstall or recover if ever I need to? HP has made me afraid. This laptop was a lot of $$$$s.
When you boot from the DVD and start the "clean" install, you'll get to a point where it asks where to install the OS. It's there you can delete all the partitions (cause you are running under the install mini-OS). You'll end up with a completely blank unallocated drive. That's where you choose to install...... just let the install process do it's thing and you'll get the partitions, as set up by MS, and listed above by Navylcmdr. You can't get any cleaner! Don't forget to do Updates. The DVD can be used down the road if you need to do a repair or in-place upgrade. AND..... backup, backup, backup! You'll be fine.
If you've never done this before, word of caution. You'll get a "Press any key to boot from DVD" when you first start. Do so. BUT, the process will re-start several times. DO NOT answer that question the next time it comes up, just let it time-out (about 3 seconds) and manually eject the DVD. If you press any key to boot from DVD the second time you'll start all over, not what you want to do. It's now running on a shrunk down OS that only knows how to do the install.
Ok, great. Got it. I swear I'm really no newbie at this, I've done plenty of partitioning on every machine I've owned. When I upgraded from XP to 7 I installed 7 on a different partition so I could boot in and out from XP until I adapted to 7 and wiped the XP partition and merged it with 7. But I'm always nervous doing things like that. I know that sick, sinking feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when an ominous blue screen comes up during partitioning that basically suggests "Doofus, you just fried your machine." That happened with the dual boot setup I mentioned. It hung at about 60% and stayed there for a long enough time for me to start getting worried. I was afraid to hard boot since the partitioning was unfinished. Someone in a forum said don't worry, go for it and when I did Win 7 booted up with all the partitions setup perfectly. I assumed just the screen froze but the process continued.
Thanks so much!