In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a production key sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer'due south manuals. Simply in contempo years manufacturers started storing this license inside the machine'due south UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. Certainly a better arroyo overall. In other instances, for example if you congenital and installed your Os, your key is associated with your Microsoft account, and so in that location 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 lot need to know in this article, from erstwhile school means to think keys, to the more modernistic approaches to make practiced use of your licenses and what restrictions may use depending on your type of license.

Windows x introduced a "Digital Entitlement" element to Microsoft's license which links your Windows primal to an ID generated based on your PC'south hardware. Only because your hardware can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to become a "Digital License" when 2016's Anniversary Update (1607) arrived.

This means your Windows x license at present ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you lot activate a copy of the operating system simply by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you have a newer Windows PC or y'all already log in using your Microsoft business relationship, you generally shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 key. We will explicate that in better detail in a minute.

There may be other scenarios where you may nonetheless want to manually find a Windows cardinal stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or forbid this primal from automatically being practical during installation. Not to mention that dissimilar weather condition apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might exist trying to find the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor'southward Note: This characteristic was originally published on Dec 2018. Information technology's just every bit relevant today, so nosotros've bumped it as role of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. costless upgrade

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

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and can't be transferred to some other machine. Again, these should be auto-practical from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, merely yous tin also retrieve them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased straight from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can exist transferred to some other machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though yous can also "uninstall" a Windows cardinal from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows seven and 8 don't have a unique Windows x key. This can only be transferred to 1 other machine (non if you upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do 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 cardinal isn't shown hither:

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If yous have a digital license, you lot should see "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account."

You can also link a Microsoft business relationship to a Windows license past clicking "add a Microsoft Business relationship" on the bottom of the aforementioned page and providing your login data.

Find your key from inside Windows

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

wmic path softwarelicensingservice become OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

In that location's also a normally cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You lot tin download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it every bit a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

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

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

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

Windows x Product Central Tool - Made by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM central only didn't observe the retail license on our Windows To Go drive.

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

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

Find your key from exterior Windows

If you lot can't boot into Windows and want to remember that primal, you lot can nonetheless access this data from an external environment such equally a Windows To Go bulldoze, or by attaching your not-booting Windows drive to some other machine.

Note that if you're recovering the central from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting drive with your Windows key is offline by default and will have to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the drive and set up it equally "online." As mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that nosotros already listed volition permit you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

You can as well navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Outset) though the key is not in plain text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and look for "DigitalProductId" in the correct console.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your Bone drive at Windows\System32\Config -- expect 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 amidst other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor can load hive files from other installations:

  • Open up the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Start)
  • Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so information technology'due south 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 you lot chose and go to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows central via Linux was equally simple every bit inbound the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't notice 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 -1

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

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

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

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Boosted resources

Although information technology'southward user-friendly to have your Windows fundamental automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want 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, you want the following text, where the Xs correspond to your license key.

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

Uninstalling a retail central from a given machine is besides possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft'south servers, it volition forbid future conflicts from multiple machines using the same fundamental.

Enter the post-obit line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active production 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 we uninstalled and cleared the cardinal from our Windows installation, nosotros were able to reactivate that re-create of Windows merely past clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation page.

One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite non existence linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail fundamental that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned as a Windows To Get bulldoze and plugged into another machine with a unlike hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft'south activation is forgiving enough and y'all should have no problems validating your Bone license on a new motorcar or afterwards several hardware changes.

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