In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product primal sticker that was placed outside of the motorcar or with your calculator's manuals. But in contempo years manufacturers started storing this license within the auto'south UEFI/BIOS and the data is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. Certainly a better approach overall. In other instances, for example if you built and installed your Bone, your central is associated with your Microsoft account, and then 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 comprehend all you lot need to know in this article, from old school ways to retrieve keys, to the more than modernistic approaches to make adept utilise of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

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

This ways your Windows ten license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating arrangement simply by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you accept a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you by and large shouldn't take to search for your original Windows 10 key. We will explain that in better detail in a infinitesimal.

At that place may be other scenarios where y'all may even so want to manually discover a Windows central stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this fundamental from automatically beingness applied during installation. Not to mention that different weather apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well every bit those given to people who upgraded to Windows ten for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to observe the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor'south Note: This feature was originally published on December 2018. It's just as relevant today, so we've bumped it every bit office of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade

In that location are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. Every bit a general dominion of thumb:

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and can't exist transferred to some other auto. Again, these should be car-practical from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, but you lot can as well recollect them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can be transferred to some other machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin can also "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 be transferred to 1 other machine (non if you upgraded from an OEM cardinal). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Practise I have a digital license?

The Windows x Settings app has a page 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 you have a digital license, you 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 account to a Windows license by clicking "add together a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the same folio and providing your login information.

Find your central from inside Windows

Inbound the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM central embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn't render whatever keys on other ii machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 existence activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

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

Nosotros downloaded a diversity of utilities that tin can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry equally well equally those that are UEFI/BIOS-leap. In testing, some of the applications found both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others merely worked for one or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey - Constitute both the embedded OEM fundamental also as the retail primal from our currently running re-create of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was also included in our results, though no fundamental 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 as well found both our retail and OEM keys, and tin can load the SOFTWARE hive file from some other 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 Go bulldoze.

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

Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail key but not the UEFI OEM primal. This software tin also load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows x Pro install every bit Enterprise.

Find your fundamental from outside Windows

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

Note that if you're recovering the primal from a Windows To Go workspace, the not-booting drive with your Windows key is offline by default and volition have to be enabled in Deejay Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the bulldoze and set it as "online." As mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will let y'all load the registry hive file from some other Windows installation.

Y'all can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Starting time) though the key is not in evidently text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and look for "DigitalProductId" in the right panel.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your OS bulldoze 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 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 Start)
  • Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it'south 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 key via Linux was as uncomplicated every bit entering the following line in a terminal, though nosotros couldn't find whatsoever GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would recall the license from a registry hive file:

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

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

If y'all have a kick disc around, Chntpw (also known equally Offline NT Countersign & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-1 recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren's Boot CD.

Here's how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux final so display the hex value for the primal in that hive (use dpi instead of hex to decode the key within chntpw, though once more, this didn't give the states a valid cardinal):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Boosted resource

Although it'due south 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 utilize some other 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 key from a given machine is also possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft'south servers, it will forbid future conflicts from multiple machines using the same primal.

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

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

Equally a terminal anecdote from testing, when we uninstalled and cleared the key from our Windows installation, nosotros were able to reactivate that re-create of Windows just past clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation folio.

One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not being linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail key that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned every bit a Windows To Go drive and plugged into another machine with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving enough and you lot should have no issues validating your Os license on a new machine or afterward several hardware changes.

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