[SOLVED]Partitions and OEMs

I bought an HP laptop from Walmart a little bit ago, an intended to dual boot with Manjaro + i3 desktop to give it a spin. The laptop came pre installed with Windows 10, and has the entire hdd partitioned out by the OEM which is the most annoying thing ever.

My question is if I format the drive to manually setup the partitions will I be able to get my activation key from Microsoft as long as the device is registered to my MS account? Because it's looking like I'll have to wipe, retable, install Windows like a sane person installs windows, and then install Manjaro afterwards.

[SOLVED] Made Win10 install usb, nuked entire drive and installed clean, left space for Manjaro. Windows 10 installed and activated itself with the original OEM key without any hitch at all.

Tip for anybody doing something similar: Mount /boot/efi to the ESP created by Windows, do not create a new one for Manjaro.

Once I figured that out, installation went smooth as silk, am currently editing this post from my new Manjaro install.

im not sure about the reactivation part but couldnt you just shrink the drive? you could use windows disk manager or gparted to shrink the drive.

I really really hate shrinking partitions.

almost ALL laptop manufacturers use the entire drive. they dont expect you to dual boot anything

@Raate Everyone hates shrinking drives. unless you can find out if you can reactiate windows might be your only choice