Windows 10 Education?
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I have a couple of laptops that has been wiped completely and needs to be reinstalled.
I think they're OEM licensed for Windows 10 Education because they have the stickers. Is that the same installation image as Enterprise?
According to Microsoft, the Education edition is Enterprise with different defaults.
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OK, turned out that there are actually two Education versions:
- Windows 10 Pro Education (based on Professional)
- Windows 10 Education (based on Enterprise)
Perhaps Education based on the Enterprise version is only for volume keys and Education Pro is what you get when you buy a computer that comes pre-installed with the Education license. I don't know.
Anyways, I managed to reinstall Windows 10 using the standard download media from Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10Installation didn't find the product key in the BIOS so I had to install without a product key and select "Windows 10 Pro Education".
After completing the installation I wanted to active Windows. It wouldn't do this by itself.
So to activate I needed the product key in the BIOS. To get that you run:
wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKeyThen I entered that key into the activation which worked perfectly.
You can probably apply the same approach to reinstall different Windows version when you have a OEM license on the hardware - especially when you have wiped or installed a new drive and you have no installation or recovery media at hand.
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Hmm, now I'm thinking I probably should have installed Windows 11 instead...
Well, maybe not, I don't actually run it on anything else.
