In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product key sticker that was placed exterior of the auto or with your computer'south manuals. Simply in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the car'south UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating arrangement. Certainly a improve arroyo overall. In other instances, for instance if y'all congenital and installed your Os, your key is associated with your Microsoft account, then there is no way to "lose it" anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the way information technology handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all yous need to know in this article, from one-time school means to recall keys, to the more than modernistic approaches to make skillful use of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

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

This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting y'all activate a copy of the operating organization simply by logging in with valid online credentials. Then, if you lot accept a newer Windows PC or you lot already log in using your Microsoft account, you mostly shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 key. Nosotros volition explicate that in better detail in a minute.

In that location may be other scenarios where you may still want to manually discover a Windows central stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically beingness applied during installation. Not to mention that different weather apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for free. And in a worst example scenario, you might exist trying to discover the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor'due south Notation: This feature was originally published on December 2018. It's just as relevant today, so nosotros've bumped it as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. gratuitous upgrade

At that place are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. Every bit a general rule of pollex:

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific figurer and can't be transferred to another automobile. Again, these should be auto-practical from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modernistic boxed PC, but you can also call up them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can be transferred to another automobile and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though yous tin as well "uninstall" a Windows key from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for gratuitous from Windows 7 and 8 don't have a unique Windows 10 key. This can only exist transferred to one other car (not if y'all upgraded from an OEM key). Costless upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Exercise I have a digital license?

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

Become to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If yous have a digital license, yous should run into "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft business relationship."

You tin too link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Account" on the lesser of the aforementioned page and providing your login information.

Discover your key from inside Windows

Entering the post-obit lines into an admin Control Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM central embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines we used for testing despite Windows ten being activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

There's likewise a commonly cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (non those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You lot tin download the script hither. Re-create this text and paste information technology into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

We downloaded a variety of utilities that tin retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry likewise as those that are UEFI/BIOS-bound. 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 - Plant both the embedded OEM key too every bit the retail central from our currently running copy of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was as well included in our results, though no key was provided). As 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 tin load the SOFTWARE hive file from some other Windows installation.

Windows 10 Production Fundamental Tool - Made by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM key but didn't find the retail license on our Windows To Become drive.

Winkeyfinder - Found our retail key but Dell'south UEFI OEM key wasn't displayed.

Magical Jelly Edible bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail primal just not the UEFI OEM key. This software can also load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows x Pro install as Enterprise.

Discover your key from outside Windows

If you can't kicking into Windows and desire to remember that central, y'all can still access this data from an external environment such equally a Windows To Go drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to some other motorcar.

Notation that if yous're recovering the key from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting bulldoze with your Windows key is offline by default and will accept to exist enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Correct-click the drive and set it as "online." As mentioned to a higher place, several of the 3rd-political party tools that we already listed will let you lot load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

You can also navigate to your license direct from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the key is not in patently text. Get to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and await for "DigitalProductId" in the right panel.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your Bone drive 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 can search for Windows keys on computers at remote domains among other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor can load hive files from other installations:

  • Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Start)
  • 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 proper name for this external hive file
  • The hive should appear as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • To unload the hive, select the proper name you lot chose and get to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows primal via Linux was as unproblematic as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't notice whatever GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would retrieve the license from a registry hive file:

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

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

If you have a kicking disc effectually, Chntpw (as well known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is office of many all-in-one recovery solutions such equally Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren'southward Boot CD.

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

chntpw -e YourDrive/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Boosted resource

Although it'southward convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, yous'll accept to tweak the Windows installation media if you desire to use another license.

Open 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, yous want the following text, where the Xs correspond to your license primal.

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

Uninstalling a retail central from a given machine is also possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft'due south servers, it will foreclose future conflicts from multiple machines using the aforementioned primal.

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

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

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

One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite non beingness linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail central that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned as a Windows To Go bulldoze and plugged into another motorcar with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving enough and you should have no issues validating your Bone license on a new machine or after several hardware changes.

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