Replacing hard drive and Windows product key

[olhof]

Hi’

I’m planning to renovate my HP Pavilion seral no. [edit] running Windows 10 Creators Fall Update by replacing the hard drive with a new one and installing a fresh copy of windows 10 and other software.

Do I need a Windows product key to do this, if yes, how do I get this product key? And what are the recommended sequence of steps in the renovation  process? The PC is currently running without problems.

The PC was bought in 2010 with Windows 7 and has later been updated to Windows 10. The original factory image is still on the hard drive, I have a recovery disk created after the original installation was completed, and I may have the original product key (26 numbers/letters and 3 hyphens).

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

To reinstall W10...you can do that for free at any time by using the Media creation tool at the link below.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

The utility will allow you to make a bootable W10 USB installation flash drive (you will need at least a 4 GB flash drive for this), or you can save an ISO file, which you can burn to a DVD using your DVD burning program's burn ISO option.

When you get to the part of the W10 installation script where you are asked to enter a product key, select the 'I don't have a product key' option (Skip), and W10 will install and automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.