Here's some good news: your license for Windows 11 is probably good for Windows 10 as well. Grab a Windows 10 install media from Microsoft and do a clean install on the drive.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10I...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10I...
And good luck finding somewhere to buy a single license of that. And even then, there's a high chance software you use (browser, IDEs, ...) will not keep getting updates after 2025.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/w...
[1] - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-sec...
How important that is, no idea! The firewall is probably passable but I generally don't know your risk profile.
Applications and the rest of the system offer a lot of surface area
Error code: PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
(It's probably because I disable some cipher suites).
A game released 12 years ago and still gets regular patches? Completely fine with that.
My understanding from a lot of Google/browsing is that my new HP has will a Windows Product Code in the BIOS (or UEFI) and, from that product code, will permit installing either of Windows 10 Home or Windows 11 Home.
Right.
Thanks for the URL. That is for
"Create Windows 10 installation media"
and
"...download and run the media creation tool."
Believe I did try that. Soooo, tried to run that "tool" on Windows 7 Professional, taking the option to create media for "another computer", but got a message that now that tool won't run on 7.
So, looks like I should try running the "media creation tool" on my new HP with Windows 11. Then use that "media" just created to install 10 on the new HP.
While doing that work, also create install media for Windows 11 just in case at some point would be glad to have it.
Thanks.
The ISO file just sits in a folder like a last resort installation backup, but it can then be used to create a fresh bootable Windows installation USB stick (or DVD) any time from then on without need to access the internet after that.
Well you might want to use a program called Rufus which will more conveniently turn a Windows installation ISO into a bootable USB drive than the Media Creation Tool anyway.
Plus IIRC, Rufus would run under Windows 7, but you will need to use last year's version of Rufus, look at this page of current and past versions:
You will see that rufus-3.22.exe from 2023 is the newest thing that was intended to run on W7, so download that, download the W10 ISO from Microsoft, and you can then run Rufus to choose the ISO from your own filesystem that you would like to turn into a bootable USB stick.
That USB stick would then be the Windows 10 installation media like you probably wanted to begin with. It also has some recovery functions and a powerful command line on its own if you need it.
Really still functions this way not much different than the original W7 installation DVDs up to W11 so far.