How To Find The Windows 10 Product Key

In cursory For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product key sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer's manuals. But in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the car's UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating arrangement. Certainly a meliorate approach overall. In other instances, for example if you lot built and installed your OS, your primal is associated with your Microsoft account, so in that location is no style to "lose it" anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all you lot need to know in this article, from onetime schoolhouse ways to retrieve keys, to the more than modern approaches to brand adept use of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

Windows 10 introduced a "Digital Entitlement" element to Microsoft'southward license which links your Windows key to an ID generated based on your PC's hardware. But considering your hardware can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to go a "Digital License" when 2016's Ceremony Update (1607) arrived.

This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating system merely by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn't accept to search for your original Windows x key. We will explicate that in better item in a minute.

There may exist other scenarios where yous may still want to manually find a Windows primal stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or preclude this key from automatically beingness practical during installation. Not to mention that different conditions utilise for non-OEM retail keys, as well equally those given to people who upgraded to Windows x for free. And in a worst instance scenario, you might be trying to find the license for a re-create of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor's Note: This feature was originally published on December 2018. It'southward just as relevant today, so we've bumped information technology equally function of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade

There are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. As a general rule of thumb:

OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and tin can't be transferred to another machine. Over again, these should be motorcar-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, but you can also retrieve them manually.
Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can be transferred to another car and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin can likewise "uninstall" a Windows key from a given PC.
Those who upgraded to Windows ten for complimentary from Windows 7 and eight don't have a unique Windows x key. This can only be transferred to one other machine (not if y'all upgraded from an OEM fundamental). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Practice I accept a digital license?

The Windows 10 Settings app has a page for displaying your activation information, including whether you have a digital license, though your central isn't shown hither:

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If yous accept a digital license, you should run across "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account."

You lot can too link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information.

Find your cardinal from within Windows

Entering the post-obit lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to brandish the OEM key embedded in our arrangement'due south UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines we used for testing despite Windows x being activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from SoftwareLicensingService').OA3xOriginalProductKey"

There's likewise a unremarkably cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You can download the script hither. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. And then double-click to launch the file.

Nosotros downloaded a diversity of utilities that can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry also as those that are UEFI/BIOS-jump. In testing, some of the applications found both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others only worked for one or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey - Found both the embedded OEM key as well as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. As well includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was also included in our results, though no key was provided). Equally with some of the other tools on this list, ProduKey can load Windows keys from external sources/drives.

ShowKey Plus - This utility also found both our retail and OEM keys, and can load the SOFTWARE hive file from another Windows installation.

Windows 10 Product Key Tool - Fabricated by the programmer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM cardinal only didn't observe the retail license on our Windows To Go drive.

Winkeyfinder - Found our retail fundamental only Dell's UEFI OEM cardinal wasn't displayed.

Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail cardinal but not the UEFI OEM key. This software tin can likewise load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows 10 Pro install every bit Enterprise.

Find your key from outside Windows

If you can't boot into Windows and want to call up that key, you can notwithstanding access this data from an external environs such as a Windows To Become drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to some other machine.

Note that if you're recovering the key from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting bulldoze with your Windows key is offline by default and volition take to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the bulldoze and fix it as "online." Equally mentioned above, several of the tertiary-party tools that nosotros already listed volition let you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

Yous can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the cardinal is not in plain text. Get to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and await for "DigitalProductId" in the right console.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your Os bulldoze at Windows\System32\Config -- look for the file named SOFTWARE.

In testing, both ProduKey and ShowKey Plus loaded the SOFTWARE hive file and displayed the key for an external Windows installation via Windows To Go. Also note that ProduKey tin can search for Windows keys on computers at remote domains amid other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor can load hive files from other installations:

Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Kickoff)
Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it's selected
Click File > Load Hive and navigate to the SOFTWARE file in Windows\System32\Config on your other drive
Enter a name for this external hive file
The hive should appear as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
To unload the hive, select the name yous chose and get to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-jump Windows cardinal via Linux was every bit simple as entering the post-obit line in a final, though we couldn't find any GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would call up the license from a registry hive file:

sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM | tail -1

The control-line tool Chntpw can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn't return a valid primal when decoding the production ID within the tool, though if you had to you could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If you take a boot disc effectually, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Countersign & Registry Editor) is role of many all-in-one recovery solutions such equally Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren'southward Boot CD.

Hither'south how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal and then brandish the hex value for the key in that hive (use dpi instead of hex to decode the key within chntpw, though again, this didn't give us a valid primal):

chntpw -due east YourDrive/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Boosted resources

Although information technology's user-friendly to accept your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll accept to tweak the Windows installation media if y'all want to use another license.

Open up the installation media in File Explorer, browse to the Sources folder and create a new text file named PID.txt in the Sources folder. In PID.txt, you want the following text, where the Xs represent to your license central.

[PID]
Value=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Uninstalling a retail key from a given machine is as well possible and while this doesn't automatically update the data on Microsoft'southward servers, it will prevent time to come conflicts from multiple machines using the same key.

Enter the post-obit line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key from the Windows registry (here are more slmgr commands):

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

As a last anecdote from testing, when nosotros uninstalled and cleared the primal from our Windows installation, we were able to reactivate that copy of Windows simply by clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation page.

One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not beingness linked to a Microsoft business relationship. And again, this was for a retail key that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned equally a Windows To Go drive and plugged into some other automobile with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving plenty and you should take no problems validating your OS license on a new machine or after several hardware changes.