Windows Activation

[kancasu5]

I bougth a 17-CN3159ng with windows 11 home preinstalled. I created a media creation tool usb stick and installed a fresh windows 11 home. The fresh installed windows doesn't recognize the key. Should the key not be embedded on the mainboard? What can i do?

[BeemerBiker]

Use show key plus to get the product key
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pkvzcprx9nv?amp%3Bgl=US


Windows 11 and Windows 10: In most cases, Windows 11 and Windows 10 activates automatically using a digital license and doesn’t require you to enter a product key. Read about this here.

If you tried a windows restore / install and are asked for a key then possibly you are restoring window's "home" using the window's "pro" version. The product key will tell you what version is required.

Instead of using Microsoft creation tool you could use HPs cloud recovery for your laptop. The cloud recovery is better because it has all the unique drivers that HP uses on their laptop. 

The cloud recovery can be downloaded from the Microsoft Windows store as explained here

HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10 and 11)

The HP Cloud Recovery Tool is an application developed by HP.  It enables customers to access a digital download of their recovery media and create a bootable USB drive (Minimum 32GB) to recover their units back to factory status.

Download tool here  Microsoft Store

For further information about this tool, click on the following link.

Learn more

[Paul_Tikkanen]

@kancasu5 

The product specs for your notebook indicate that it came with FreeDOS from HP, not Windows

HP Laptop 17-cn3159ng | HP® Österreich

PC's that come with FreeDOS have no Windows product key in the BIOS and the user has to supply their own Windows license/product key.

That's the reason why you are in your current dilemma.

If you bought this notebook from a store, then they should have given you the Windows product key they used to install Windows on the notebook so you could use it if you had to reinstall Windows.