To cut a long story short I have a 18 month old laptop left over after someone left my lab (I paid for it from a research grant) that runs Win7. The laptop would be good for me when travelling as it is a lot smaller and lighter than mine but to get a clean install of Win7 (and it needs it) costs £150 on internal charging and isn’t being supported as of 2020 but they won’t yet install Win10 as it isn’t a priority machine (ie I already have a working one). I’ve been told that IT don’t give 2 shits about what happens to the machine and would rather I shoved it on a shelf to avoid recycling related paperwork. I personally would rather get some use out of it, so………

If I buy a personal Win10 licence is there a way of installing it on the machine despite the current install of Win7 being admin protected to the nth degree (we have zero admin rights, certainly can’t install downloaded software and USB sticks have to be encrypted to be read from)? Would a DVD or USB ISO enable me to bypass the admin and just wipe it from the ground up? Is there a way of checking in advance? I use Office for work and can install Office365 through our work program on personal machines so that would be sufficient for what I need.

Or can I wipe it with a Linux install and then put windows 10 over that? Or do I need to see if the BIOS is protected? Or………

Suggestions please.

USB installation media will just overwrite whatever’s there,if you want it to.the difficult bit might be getting the device to boot to the key. I bet IT have the bios locked in some way to stop you doing this.

Do you have any spare HDDs knocking around?

You could put a fresh drive in it and keep the existing drive to one side in case it’s ever asked for again.

Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. Will have to see in the morning.

When I’ve wanted to do this to old work laptops, I decided it was easier just to buy a new ssd drive. They’re even cheaper now. Make a clean install as a fresh machine. If hey want the old machine back, swap ssd onto your next one.

I bet the bios isn’t locked btw. Ours aren’t. Even when I had admin rights.

Try a clean install first.

If there’s a bios lock on it, you might need to remove the bios battery, which might involve dismantling the laptop somewhat.

Cruicial is your friend here.

No spare HDDs sadly.

Just flatten it and install a fresh Windows image. If that doesn’t work then it’s screwdriver time, and disconnect the bios battery.

If it has a Win7 serial number stuck on the back, you won’t need to buy a Win10 key.

So if it’s locked down you’ll probably struggle to boot of the USB drive, unless as others have said you can enable hat option in the BIOS.

Does it have a DVD drive? I’d guess not if it’s a smaller machine. If it does you may be able to burn a W10 DVD and boot from that.

Basically if the bios is locked down and you can’t boot from external media then yes you’re looking at killing power to the bios to see if that will allow you to enable boot from external devices.

IMO it’s a dubious thing to attempt anyway without explicit permission but I take it you just want to appropriate the laptop for personal use? Because if the official ones are locked down as you describe a random user-controlled W10 machine is unlikely to be accredited to handle work data, won’t be secured with approved encryption and will be unable to connect to your work network.
If you’ve a business case for it your best option is to go through official channels. Alternatively, if you’re really shameless something in the statement “they won’t yet install Win10 as it isn’t a priority machine (ie I already have a working one)” could change

See if you can boot from usb if you can you can use ntpasswd to reset admin password on the laptop. If you cannot boot from usb. Bios battery out.

Just flatten it and install a fresh Windows image.

This, and

If it has a Win7 serial number stuck on the back, you won’t need to buy a Win10 key.

This.

Download the installer image onto a USB pendrive, boot from said drive, do a clean install, give it the W7 OEM key from the sticker on the laptop when prompted for a serial number. Job jobbed, no passwords required.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

If in a university: Ask IT to remove everything and that you would like this machine to be self managed?

Drive may be bitlocked. I did this with an old laptop – was given to me to work from home, but the battery was borked. Bought a new one, then couldn’t install on a bitlocked drive. Pulled the drive (an M2 SSD) and fortunately, my son’s gaming machine had a M2 slot. Popped drive in then formatted it.

If the Win7 licence code is still on the laptop (i.e. the sticker on the case), just install a fresh Windows 10 and use the license code – Win 10 will accept it – Microsoft hasn’t stopped the upgrades.

Drive may be bitlocked.

Doesn’t matter if you are overwriting it.

Download the installer image onto a USB pendrive, boot from said drive, do a clean install, give it the W7 OEM key from the sticker on the laptop when prompted for a serial number. Job jobbed, no passwords required.

This.

Exactly what I did with mine & it worked perfectly.

No Win7 key on the back. Just tried to overwrite with a Win10 USB but got an error back (0x8007000D for error code fans). Then BitLocker had a tantrum at me for enabling UEFI to allow booting from a USB (no option to boot from USB in the legacy BIOS menu).

I assume that if I just buy a new HDD then bitlocker won’t have anything to do with it and I can just install from the USB? Or does bitlocker infect the BIOS too so even if the HDD isn’t there it will still get in the way?

If in a university: Ask IT to remove everything and that you would like this machine to be self managed?

Ahhahahahahaha! Our Uni IT lot make Nazis look chilled out by comparison. Let someone do something for themselves? Never. We exist merely to justify their jobs. Universally loathed and generally incompetent. We have to make our problems fit their solutions.

Can you remove the HDD and put it into a USB cage and then delete any existing partitions and give it a full format?

Maybe, but I don’t have a USB cage………………and the only other PC I have access to has all the same “protection” shite on so I doubt I would be able to do much.

I assume that if I just buy a new HDD then bitlocker won’t have anything to do with it and I can just install from the USB? Or does bitlocker infect the BIOS too so even if the HDD isn’t there it will still get in the way?

There’s three things you need to be aware of with a modern boot sequence.

Bitlocker encryption protects the individual drive (against for instance doing exactly what’s been said above and then reading the contents). It does not protect the system itself from anything.

TPM is a bit of protected storage, which can hold (amongst a few other things) the Bitlocker decryption key. Critical to note here however is that TPM is passive – ie, it doesn’t do anything under its own steam, rather it responds to the OS when Bitlocker goes “yo, geif password, bee-atch.” If there’s nothing asking the question then ipso facto TPM doesn’t do squat.

Secure Boot is UEFI’s “lockdown.” With Secure Boot enabled, the system will only boot OSes with a recognised signature. In essence, this means Microsoft OSes from Windows 8 onwards, or versions of Linux which come with an MS-signed bit of code (called ‘shim’). By default this is typically simply “any MS signed code,” but this could be configured to be more aggressive. Ordinarily step 1 of this process would be “disable Secure Boot” but you’re running Windows 7 which doesn’t support it, so this shouldn’t concern us here.

TL;DR – As far as I can see, your only security concern is with the drive itself.

As for your error – it seems pretty generic (as far as I can tell it means “invalid data” and crops up all over the place). It does make me wonder though, are you trying to do an upgrade rather than wiping everything and starting again?

For your Windows OEM key, it’s possible that IT have removed the CoA sticker but try looking under the battery. Push comes to shove I can give you a key, but you ideally want to obtain this before flattening the old one.

You can try using a keyfinder – Belarc is as good as any – but if it’s running the original OEM installation of Windows rather than a corporate image then this will probably give you a gibberish key which won’t work. (Windows 7 era OEM installs often used a thing called SLP which is a sort of generic master key, you can’t use this to reinstall).

https://www.belarc.com/en/products_belarc_advisor

So, as a plan, would the best route be to take the drive out, plug it in as USB to another machine and format it?

I’m trying to do a fresh install but it never brings up the option. I enter language, time zone, etc and the error pops up after that so it ever even gets that far.

Are you trying to run it as an upgrade, or booting from the USB stick. If you boot from the USB stick, you should be given the option of nuking everything and starting from scratch.

From USB but the error crops up before I get the nuke option. Literally straight after telling it what language I speak.

I’m trying to do a fresh install but it never brings up the option. I enter language, time zone, etc and the error pops up after that so it ever even gets that far.

I’ve just walked through the process to see. This is what it does:

Boot from the USB, the first thing it gives you is keyboard and language.
Next just says “Install Now.”
Activation screen – enter your Windows 7 key here or choose “I don’t have a product key” to defer it till later.
Version selection – this will be W10 Pro as you’re almost certainly coming from either W7 Pro or Enterprise.
Licence agreement.
Installation type: Upgrade or Custom. This is the important bit, you must choose Custom at this point.
Disk selection. Select all the partitions in turn and delete them. You should be left with one drive, “Drive 0,” showing unpartitioned space. Hitting Next will then pull the trigger on the install.

the error crops up before I get the nuke option. Literally straight after telling it what language I speak.

You know, that smells suspiciously like it might be a problem with the installer itself. Try downloading the image again, maybe to a different pendrive?

Have you obtained the W7 key yet?

I’ll try a fresh USB. I had to make it on a mac so that may have been the issue. The error is straight after clicking “install now”.

I can’t get the W7 key. It is nowhere on the machine and IT refuse to hand them out.

If you’ve done it on a Mac then gods only know, that’s out of my comfort zone. If you haven’t used MS’s media creation tool then all bets are off as to what’s on that USB drive vs what the installer expects, it’s a finicky shite at the best of times.

Try the Belarc Advisor link I posted earlier. Depending on the licensing model they’ve chosen, you might be able to extract the key.

I had trouble creating USB boot drives on Mac. Gave up in the end and now use the Windows one. Something to do with partition tables being different even if the drive is still formatted FAT

Fair enough. I think I have a still working XP laptop somewhere. I’ll see if that works.

If you’ve got an XP machine (gods help you) that hasn’t been switched on in forever, make sure it’s on Service Pack 3 before you expose it to the Internet or it’ll probably be riddled with malware before the desktop’s finished loading.

Do you seriously not know anyone with a PC who could burn the pendrive for you, even?

Not offhand. All the windows machines I can think of a Uni ones. I may ask our one pet IT bod if they can do it for me……

Generally speaking, I’ve always created a USB windows boot disk on a Windows 10 machine with the same version (64 or 32 bit) that I want on the ‘other’ computer – that’s the easiest option.

I had to format the bit locked drive on another PC !