Hi all, I recently bought a new laptop and wanted to install an SSD with Windows 10 Pro on it. So I first installed Windows 7 activated with Daz loader then attempted to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. Only to find that the installer repeatedly forced Windows home on me. I was able to change a few files the .iso so it installed the Pro version, but it's not activated even though it came from a Daz activated Windows 7 ultimate. Upon closer inspection, it appears there is an embedded OS license in the BIOS . So I'm guessing every time I ran the installer it referenced that key and defaulted to Home version. And when I boot up in Pro version, it checks the BIOS key first as well and renders it inactivated. Is there any workaround to this? I see in Daz's loader there is an option to patch all OEM table ID's. Should I roll back to Windows 7, re-patch with that option then attempt to upgrade again? Thanks for any insight
Thanks very much for the reply. That's exactly what I originally did to force the .iso to install the Pro version and used a generic key with the pid.txt. Only thing is, once Pro is installed it refuses to activate despite coming from a Daz activated Windows 7 ultimate. As you also mention, I'm not sure if MS has already tied the Mobo HWID or something else to the key forever exiling me to Windows 10 home with my install technique (Winows 7 Daz -> Windows 10 Pro). I wonder what'll happen if I roll back to 7 and tick the "patch all OEM table ID" in the loader and attempt to re-upgrade. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable then myself will point out if this will bork my system or not.
Thanks for the link. I saw that thread, but I wasn't sure if it applied when there is a key embedded in the BIOS of a different Windows version then what you wish to install. I saw the note 3 in red on post #152 (I can't hyperlink yet) from that thread about embedded keys and was discouraged, am I misreading it? Thanks in advance for any clarification.
The method provided in the link by Gharlane00 worked on an Asus netbook with windows 8 (not pro) preinstalled with the key in the bios. I did turn off UEFI before I did anything and deleted the GPT partition tables with gdisk from a linux flash drive, then converted to mbr with same linux flash drive with gparted (you can use diskpart to do the same thing), then installed windows 7 ultimate with daz' loader, made it genuine online using IE, then got genuineticket.xml, clean installed windows 10 pro x64 using genuineticket.xml offline, rebooted, got online and it activated immediately. I don't see why this wouldn't work with UEFI though, but then you never stated whether you're using UEFI or not but I suppose I should assume you are, so maybe someone else can shed more light on that. In case you can't tell I hate UEFI. Yes it allows more partitions and bigger drives, but I triple boot windows 10, linux mint, and kali linux using 3 primary partitions (recovery, windows, and swap) and an extended partition with two logical drives for the two linux distros so it all fits, plus it'll never have anything close to a 2 terabyte drive. Plus converting usb flash drives from mbr to GPT and back can screw up the flash drive, making it show incorrect drive size and other such nonsense since you can't just format it back to mbr, you have to remove the gpt tables first. That's just retarded. Sorry, I sort of got on a rant there.
You only need your HDD set as GPT for UEFI boot. UEFI will boot your USB key as MBR, Fat32 formatted without issue.
Thanks for clearing that up. I was having a huge problem booting from a standard mbr flash drive to install windows 7 to my GPT hard drive and it turned out that it was because the netbook wouldn't allow installation of windows 7 period because the bios itself was preventing windows 7 from installing. It actually required a bios update that gave me a new OS selection menu and I had to select windows 7 and then it installed just fine. By the time I figured out that the bios was the problem, I had already converted the hard drive to an mbr partition. Still, I believe UEFI was designed not only to support more partitions and bigger drives, but also to make it harder for noobs to install linux. I think that's just wrong.
If you have Pro installed by whatever method worked, you can use the files you generated in the initial steps to activate it. The Ei.cfg method works great for bypassing a Home embedded key.
Thanks fellas, the .xml method seems to have worked. I will say downgrading to windows 7 on the new skylake mobos is absolute hell though