[SOLVED] Bought a Windows 10 home key and my drive had unactivated windows 10 pro!

[MNYCapricorn]

hi! I recently built my pc and got a used hard drive, not knowing the hard drive had windows pro installed, I bought a win. home key, now I cant activate my windows key cause there is a pro edition installed in the drive! Can I ask immediate assistance please 😊😊😊

 

[13thmonkey]

You really need to wipe that drive instead of using the windows that was already there.

 

[MNYCapricorn]

You really need to wipe that drive instead of using the windows that was already there.

Can I get help on how to wipe my drive? Also, I have 2 mechanical drives and 1 nvme m.2 in my pc, Windows pro is currently inside the m.2 drive.
Can I also get help on how to do a clean install of windows? I know it has something to do with having a bootable flashdrive but I havent done it before....

 

[Alabalcho]

Download Windows 10 installation media from Microsoft, create USB or DVD as appropriate. Start installing, provide the key you have, it will install the OS. You will have "brand new" Windows installation.

I'd recommend to leave only the drive which will be the system drive during that exercise.

 

[USAFRet]

Absolutely wipe that drive and install a clean Win 10 Home to go with your license.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Oussebon]

You bought a used hard drive and there was still stuff on it?

I would run DBAN on it tbh https://dban.org/ to remove any traces of what was on it before. Especially as you've no idea what the previous owner put on it.

Assuming it was an HDD with the stuff on it. DBAN's not for SSDs. As above you'd want to do a clean install of Windows, deleting every partition on the drive until it is only "unallocated space" as above.