How To Retrieve My Windows 10 Key

In brief For the longest fourth dimension Windows PCs came with a production key sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer'south manuals. But in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the car'southward UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. Certainly a ameliorate approach overall. In other instances, for example if y'all built and installed your OS, your key is associated with your Microsoft business relationship, so at that place is no way to "lose it" anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the fashion it handles Windows licenses. We'll comprehend all you lot need to know in this article, from sometime schoolhouse means to recollect keys, to the more than modernistic approaches to make good apply of your licenses and what restrictions may use depending on your type of license.

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

This means your Windows x license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting yous actuate a re-create of the operating system merely by logging in with valid online credentials. Then, if you lot have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn't have to search for your original Windows x key. We will explain that in better detail in a minute.

In that location may be other scenarios where y'all may still want to manually find a Windows key stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or forestall this key from automatically being applied during installation. Non to mention that different weather condition utilise for non-OEM retail keys, as well every bit those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for complimentary. And in a worst case scenario, you might exist trying to discover the license for a re-create of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor'southward Note: This feature was originally published on December 2018. Information technology'south just as relevant today, so we've bumped it as 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 figurer and tin can't be transferred to another machine. Again, these should be automobile-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a mod boxed PC, merely you tin can also retrieve them manually.
Retail keys are purchased straight from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can exist transferred to some other auto and that procedure should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin can also "uninstall" a Windows central from a given PC.
Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 and 8 don't take a unique Windows 10 cardinal. This tin can only be transferred to one other auto (not if you upgraded from an OEM key). Costless upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do I have a digital license?

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

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

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

You tin also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license past clicking "add a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information.

Detect your central from inside Windows

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

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

There's also a usually cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You tin can download the script here. Re-create this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it every bit a .vbs file. So 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 establish both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others but worked for ane or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey - Institute both the embedded OEM fundamental as well as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such every bit Microsoft Role and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was also included in our results, though no primal was provided). Every bit with some of the other tools on this list, ProduKey can 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 Key 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 - Establish our retail central only Dell's UEFI OEM cardinal 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 10 Pro install as Enterprise.

Find your cardinal from outside Windows

If you can't boot into Windows and want to retrieve that central, yous can still access this data from an external environment such as a Windows To Go bulldoze, or by attaching your non-booting Windows bulldoze to another machine.

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

You lot can also navigate to your license direct from the Windows registry (regedit via Beginning) though the key is not in plain text. Go 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 OS 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 central for an external Windows installation via Windows To Go. Likewise 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 Outset)
Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then 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 you chose and get to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-jump Windows key via Linux was as simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't observe any GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would call back 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 key when decoding the product ID within the tool, though if you had to you lot could extract the hex information and decode that elsewhere.

If yous accept a kicking disc around, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Countersign & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-ane recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren's Boot CD.

Here'southward how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal and so display 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 u.s. a valid primal):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although it's user-friendly to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want to employ another license.

Open the installation media in File Explorer, scan 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 key.

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

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

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

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

As a final anecdote from testing, when nosotros uninstalled and cleared the key from our Windows installation, nosotros 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 not being linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail primal that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned every bit a Windows To Go drive and plugged into another machine with a unlike hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft'south activation is forgiving enough and you should have no problems validating your Bone license on a new machine or afterwards several hardware changes.