lose10 oh. my. god. so i was working at a startup pretty much from the time windows 10 released to the time the free update expired exactly one year later. so i couldn't really take down my computer for an unknown amount of time to do the update. also wasn't sure i really wanted to. given the negative press. but then someone said windows 10 could run ubuntu. really? cool! so we were going on vacation most of august. things were naturally winding down at work. so that last week of the free upgrade period was set aside. i tried mightily. something always went wrong. and that's pretty much literally what windows said. oops something went wrong. piece of shit. so we went on vacation without upgrading. came back. and centos started telling me the windows disk was failing. oh dear. not sure that's exactly why windows 10 wouldn't install. but okay. then one day it completely died. i had already backed everything up. so i wasn't too worried. and i wanted to replace the hdd with an ssd anyway. so i bought a windows 10 pro oem license key from the internet for $25. should be good to go, right? well, yes. but really, no. there was a trick no one would tell you about. download the windows 10 iso from the microsoft website. not the windows 10 N nor KN nor Home. Windows 10. okay? good. burn it to a dvd-r. open up the pc case. install the new ssd. unplug all the other hard drives. leave the case open. boot from the dvd. install windows. first problem, the key was rejected. okay. proceed without one. windows 10 installs. yay! but no network. hrm. okay find the motherboard disk. install the network drivers. reboot. yay! network. oh god. updates. still can't activate. cause it's an oem pro key. and windows installed retail home. blech. and this is where i wasted a crap ton of time. but the solution is easy. and obvious. (imagine eye roll that would pull muscles.) /sarcasm. so boot from the dvd again. install windows 10 again. this time choose custom install. delete the two partitions windows made last time. and enter the key. this time it works! wtf? really microsoft. fucking really? sheehs. finish the install again. this time it's windows 10 pro. yay! but network is gone again. install network drivers from motherboard disk again. and now i have a working windows 10. sheehs. i'm frikken exhausted. so my working theory is the first key check failed cause there was no network. so the installer installed windows 10 home. whereas the second check did work cause the install dvd found the network drivers from the first installation. and once the installer validated the keys, it knew they were for oem pro. so it installed windows 10 pro instead of home. whew. this might explain why you can't just install windows 10. you have to install windows 7 or 8 first. so the win 10 installer can pick up the network drivers. confused? you won't be after the next episode of suck.  ¶ 8:00 AM