Laptops purchased in the UK ship with Windows Home edition. This results in some confusion during the initial setup and configuration of the new laptop. This should serve as a guide for gaining access to the machine and upgrading the Windows OS to Pro edition.
- During the Out of the Box setup the user will be prompted for a Microsoft username and password, however this is referring to a non-business account. So in order to bypass this enter in the email address “No@ThankYou.com” and “123456789” for the password.
- It will now prompt you to create a local windows admin account. Set the username to “Temp” and the password to “123456789”.
- We should now have access to the Windows desktop. If remote instruct the user to navigate to a hosted ScreenConnect session.
- Once access is established create a new user account for “Admin” and add it to the local Administrators group.
- 1. Upgrade from Home to Pro - Changepk.exe /ProductKey VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
2. Upgrade from Pro to Enterprise - Changepk.exe /ProductKey NPPR9-FWDCX-D2C8J-H872K-2YT43
3. Make sure they have an Microsoft E5 license in 365
4. Go to Activation and click Troubleshoot
- Open the Windows settings and have the user login with their GPS email. Then under System > Activation, we can change the license key to follow the information detailed in this article (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/upgrading-windows-10-home-to-windows-10-enterprise/a335b5d9-b551-4a06-8fc8-276a5a5a17b7)
- Once upgraded we should be able to add the device to the domain as usual.
- After becoming domain joined open Computer Management and disable the “Temp” user created earlier and disable the default local administrator. The “Admin”. *User that was created earlier should still be enabled*
- At this point you may continue the configuration as usual.