Win10 Language Change at install time

[ABPainter]

I've seen several questions similar to this one, but none are a real match in the first place and none that I saw have good answers anyway.

My aunt gave me her "HP Laptop 17-cp0076nr" -- this device was purchased in the USA, but I would like to send it to my girlfriend who lives in Colombia.  I already looked into shipping and customs issues, and everything is good to go there.  I can use either UPS or FedEx and due to international treaties there is no restriction on shipping this technology from the USA to Colombia.  Now I just need to set the system up for the new user.

I performed a system reset/reinstall, but the "built-in" Win10 installer just totally skips over the language selection and sticks me with English only.  I understand that I could install Win10 as English, then create a new user account, download a language pack, and then change that one user profile to use Spanish language displays... but I already know that leaves the new user (a non-English speaker) with several issues.  One issue is that Administrator Elevation prompts will continue to be in English (I've seen this happen before).  Another issue is that system update screens will still be in English.  Essentially, everything but that one user's non-elevated display will still be in English... and worse, any new users she adds will also default to English.

So what I want to do is perform this system reset and select Spanish as the default language at the time of the Win10 Installation, so that everything defaults to Spanish.  Then I can set up one admin account and download a language pack and set that to English, so I can still do things like remote tech support for the new user.

I already know that I can download and use a Win10 "installation image" straight from Microsoft, but this laptop comes from the modern era where HP does not provide the OEM license key, so I can't do that.  I'm stuck with the built-in Factory Reset image, which already has the license key slipstreamed into the installer and hidden from me as the owner of the device.

Is there any way to either obtain that license key, so I can install Windows from a legit image with Spanish as the default language, or else to get this pre-baked reset procedure to allow me to select the system language?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

If you are not given an option to change the language, your best option would be to clean install W10 and select Spanish as the language for the file download.

Download Windows 10

The Windows product key is encrypted in the BIOS and you will not need it to clean install W10 or W11.