How To Find Activation Code Windows 10

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

Microsoft has been irresolute and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all you need to know in this commodity, from old school ways to retrieve keys, to the more than mod approaches to make good use of your licenses and what restrictions may utilize depending on your blazon 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 tin can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to go a "Digital License" when 2016'south Anniversary Update (1607) arrived.

This means your Windows 10 license at present ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you actuate a re-create of the operating system merely by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you lot take a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you more often than not shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 central. We volition explain that in better detail in a minute.

There may be other scenarios where you may yet want to manually notice a Windows cardinal stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically existence applied during installation. Not to mention that different atmospheric condition apply for non-OEM retail keys, too as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to observe the license for a re-create of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor's Note: This feature was originally published on Dec 2018. It'due south but as relevant today, so we've bumped it as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade

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

OEM keys are shipped with a specific figurer and can't be transferred to some other automobile. Once more, these should be motorcar-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a mod boxed PC, just you tin can also call back them manually.
Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these tin be transferred to another machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you can also "uninstall" a Windows key from a given PC.
Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 and 8 don't have a unique Windows 10 primal. This can only exist transferred to one other machine (not if y'all upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Practise I accept a digital license?

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

Become to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If you have a digital license, y'all should see "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft business relationship."

You lot can also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Business relationship" on the lesser of the same page and providing your login information.

Find your primal from within Windows

Entering the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM key embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines nosotros used for testing despite Windows 10 being activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

At that place's also a usually cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (non those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You can download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving information technology equally a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

We downloaded a diverseness of utilities that can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry as well equally those that are UEFI/BIOS-bound. In testing, some of the applications plant both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others only worked for 1 or the other:

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

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

Windows 10 Product Central Tool - Made by the programmer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM key merely didn't find the retail license on our Windows To Go drive.

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

Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail central but non 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.

Find your key from outside Windows

If y'all tin't boot into Windows and want to retrieve that cardinal, you can still access this information from an external environment such as a Windows To Become drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to another machine.

Annotation that if you lot're recovering the primal from a Windows To Go workspace, the not-booting bulldoze with your Windows central is offline past default and will take to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the bulldoze and set it as "online." Equally mentioned above, several of the tertiary-party tools that we already listed will let you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

Yous can also navigate to your license straight from the Windows registry (regedit via Starting time) though the key is non in plain text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and look for "DigitalProductId" in the correct panel.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your OS drive at Windows\System32\Config -- await for the file named SOFTWARE.

In testing, both ProduKey and ShowKey Plus loaded the SOFTWARE hive file and displayed the fundamental for an external Windows installation via Windows To Go. Also annotation 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 name for this external hive file
The hive should announced as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
To unload the hive, select the name you chose and go to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows key via Linux was every bit simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though nosotros couldn't find any 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 -i

The command-line tool Chntpw can exist installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn't return a valid cardinal when decoding the production ID inside the tool, though if yous had to y'all could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If you have a boot disc effectually, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Countersign & Registry Editor) is function of many all-in-1 recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren's Kicking CD.

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

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although it's convenient to have your Windows cardinal automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want to utilize 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 correspond to your license key.

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

Uninstalling a retail key from a given machine is also possible and while this doesn't automatically update the data on Microsoft's servers, information technology volition foreclose futurity conflicts from multiple machines using the same cardinal.

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

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

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

One click and that sorcerer retrieved our digital license, despite not existence linked to a Microsoft account. And over again, this was for a retail key that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned equally a Windows To Become drive and plugged into another automobile with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving enough and yous should have no issues validating your Bone license on a new car or after several hardware changes.