Resetting an HP laptop that was upgraded from 8.1 to 10?

I just received an HP 15-r132wm laptop that was originally installed with Windows 8.1 but now has 10. We don't have the user PIN, and I'm not interested in any of the data on this machine. I thought this would be simple! I tried to do a reset from the recovery partition, but it won't accept either Windows 10 or 8.1 from a USB flash drive. I also tried creating a bootable USB and dropping the 8.1 ISO files onto it so I can boot from it, and it does the same thing when I try to do a reset. Diskpart says there are 6 partitions, TWO of them recovery partitions for some reason. I would just settle for blowing everything away and installing from scratch, but I have to admit I'm not well versed on UEFI installs and I'm not clear as to whether the license key is in the UEFI, and whether I will have to install 8.1 and upgrade to 10 again. Suggestions?
 

Entegy

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If the machine came with Windows 8, there is a key in the firmware that will automatically be pulled during install.

Just use Microsoft's media creation tool to make a Windows 10 USB installer, boot from USB, delete all partitions on the disk and install Windows to the newly blanked disk. Don't create new partitions ahead of time. You'll lose the HP Recovery partition but that's gonna be over a decade out of date so no loss there.
 

Entegy

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Does the windows installer work with GPT partitioned drives nowadays?

I haven't had to mess with partition tables and the like since XP but I know back then it didn't quite work right and converted everything over to MBR
GPT partition table is required by UEFI firmware. Microsoft has mandated it since 2012 for OEMs shipping machines with Windows and now Windows 11 is UEFI firmware/GPT partition table only for its boot drive.
 
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HP boot menu select key is F9 on boot.
If it's set to not allow USB Boot, then it's F10 for BIOS settings.
I did get it to boot off USB, but it wouldn't reset. The good news is that I hadn't tried one way of entering the recovery menu-- holding shift while restarting from the login screen-- and for some reason that seemed to work. It might actually be that I also linked to the WLAN so it could download software... I hate when I change two things so I'm not sure which one did the trick. We'll see if the reset actually worked tomorrow.
 

Entegy

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I did get it to boot off USB, but it wouldn't reset. The good news is that I hadn't tried one way of entering the recovery menu-- holding shift while restarting from the login screen-- and for some reason that seemed to work. It might actually be that I also linked to the WLAN so it could download software... I hate when I change two things so I'm not sure which one did the trick. We'll see if the reset actually worked tomorrow.
This doesn't sound like it booted off of USB at all, unless the USB stick was not from the media creation tool, but from HP. A regular Windows installer doesn't need Internet access during the time it's booted from USB.