In cursory For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product fundamental sticker that was placed exterior of the machine or with your computer'southward manuals. Only 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 system. Certainly a amend approach overall. In other instances, for example if y'all congenital and installed your Bone, your central is associated with your Microsoft account, so there is no way to "lose it" anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the style information technology handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all y'all need to know in this article, from sometime schoolhouse ways to retrieve keys, to the more mod approaches to make good utilise of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

Windows 10 introduced a "Digital Entitlement" chemical element to Microsoft's license which links your Windows key to an ID generated based on your PC's hardware. Merely considering your hardware tin can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to get a "Digital License" when 2022's Anniversary Update (1607) arrived.

This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating organization just by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft business relationship, you mostly shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 key. We will explain that in better particular in a minute.

There may be other scenarios where you may still want to manually find a Windows central stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or foreclose this key from automatically being applied during installation. Not to mention that dissimilar conditions apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows ten for costless. And in a worst case scenario, y'all might be trying to discover the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor's Annotation: This characteristic was originally published on December 2022. It'southward just every bit relevant today, so we've bumped it as part 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't be transferred to another automobile. Over again, these should be auto-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a mod boxed PC, but you tin 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 y'all tin can also "uninstall" a Windows cardinal from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for costless from Windows vii and viii don't have a unique Windows 10 primal. This tin can only exist transferred to one other auto (not if yous upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do I have a digital license?

The Windows 10 Settings app has a folio 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 you take 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 can likewise 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 data.

Find your key from inside Windows

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

wmic path softwarelicensingservice go OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

At that place'south also a commonly 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 information technology into Notepad, saving it as 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 as well every bit 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 fundamental besides as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. Besides includes keys for many other applications such every bit Microsoft Function and Adobe products (strangely, Cyberspace Explorer was as well included in our results, though no cardinal 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 likewise establish both our retail and OEM keys, and can load the SOFTWARE hive file from some other Windows installation.

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

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

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

Observe your key from exterior Windows

If yous tin't boot into Windows and want to retrieve that key, you lot can still access this information from an external environs such as a Windows To Become bulldoze, or past attaching your non-booting Windows bulldoze to another machine.

Note that if you lot're recovering the primal 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 ready it as "online." As mentioned in a higher place, several of the 3rd-political party tools that we already listed will permit y'all load the registry hive file from some other Windows installation.

You can likewise navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the cardinal is non in plainly 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 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 notation 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 information technology'southward selected
  • Click File > Load Hive and navigate to the SOFTWARE file in Windows\System32\Config on your other bulldoze
  • Enter a name for this external hive file
  • The hive should appear equally 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 primal via Linux was as uncomplicated as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't find whatsoever 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 tin can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn't return a valid fundamental when decoding the product ID inside the tool, though if you had to yous could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If y'all accept a boot disc around, Chntpw (too known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-one recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren'due south Boot CD.

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

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although it'due south convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if yous 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 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 information on Microsoft's servers, it will prevent futurity conflicts from multiple machines using the same key.

Enter the following line in an administrator Control Prompt to uninstall the currently agile product license and clear that key from the Windows registry (here are more slmgr commands):

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

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

1 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 every bit a Windows To Get drive and plugged into some other automobile with a different hardware contour. In other words, with luck, Microsoft'south activation is forgiving plenty and you lot should have no bug validating your OS license on a new car or afterwards several hardware changes.

Go along Reading. Software at TechSpot

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