Can't remove windows 10 home

[lildonner]

I have a pc that needs to have windows 10 home removed,  so that it can be re-imaged with a company version of windows 10 pro. The problem we are have is, after wiping the drives (2 of them) Windows 10 home edition still pops up after running the Pro Cd. We have eliminated the partitions on the drives, wiped the drives, reset the bios, removed TPM in the bios and have run out of ideas on how to install the company image on this pc. I know I can go to the app store and upgrade, however, we have software and group policy ect. that needs to be on this pc before it gets on our network.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[mdklassen]

Can you physically remove the disk-drive, and install a totally-blank disk-drive?

Or, remove the disk-drive, attach it as a "slave" disk-drive on some other computer, and use "Disk Management" to delete all the partitions, create one partition that spans the drive, and "format" the drive, and return it into the computer?

[lildonner]

I have removed the disk, wiped it on another machine, and it still put the windows 10 home version on it, I also took a drive from our stock (new never used) and put it on the machine, formatted it and it came up with Windows 10 home. We also tried to image from a flash drive instead of the cd/dvd.

At this point I think there is something cached somewhere in the bios, but not sure where. So I will return to trying different bios settings. If anyone has any suggestions on the uefi bios I am willing to try.

Thank you.

[mdklassen]

> Windows 10 home edition still pops up after running the Pro CD.

Weird.  Are you entering the 25-character product-key during the install?

If so, try *not* entering the key, and continuing with the installation.

You'll have 30 days to enter the key, and activate.

Or ...

Take the disk-drive, and the Pro CD to a different computer, and use that computer to install Windows, up to the first point where the installer needs to reboot to "continue" the installation (by using the files newly-loaded onto the disk-drive).

If it has asked for the product-key, do NOT enter it, just yet.

Shutdown, instead of allowing the reboot, and move the disk-drive back to the "target" computer.

Reboot, and see if Windows will detect the "changed" hardware and load the correct device-drivers.

[lildonner]

The strange thing is, throughout all of the various times I have installed I have never been asked to install the product key. This is after wiping the drive , installing a new drive etc., which leads me to believe that there is some sort of recovery cached on the pc somewhere.

[mdklassen]

> The strange thing is, throughout all of the various times I have installed I have never been asked to install the product key. 

From what media are you installing?

If it is the original customized-by-HP version of Windows Home, the product-key is embedded.

Probably, the installer also enforces that it is installing onto a genuine HP motherboard.

If it is Microsoft "volume-licensed" software, again the product-key could be embedded.

Browse the folders on the media, to see if one folder contains a file that contains a product-key.

There is software that "pokes" into the motherboard, to find a product-key embedded in the BIOS of some "modern" motherboards.  Try that software.

[lildonner]

I found the answer...You have to install from a flash drive, basically creat an ISO put it on the flash with a PID.txt file. The install will ignore the embedded license and use the one in the pid file.