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

Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all you need to know in this commodity, from old school ways to think keys, to the more modernistic approaches to make good apply of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

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

This ways your Windows 10 license at present ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting y'all activate a re-create of the operating organization merely by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you 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 10 key. We will explain that in better particular in a minute.

In that location may exist other scenarios where you may still desire to manually find a Windows cardinal stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically being applied during installation. Not to mention that different conditions use for not-OEM retail keys, also equally those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for gratis. And in a worst instance scenario, you might be trying to observe the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor's Note: This feature was originally published on Dec 2018. Information technology'south only as relevant today, and then we'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 use. As a general dominion of thumb:

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific reckoner and tin't be transferred to some other machine. Once more, these should exist auto-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, but you can as well remember them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can exist transferred to another machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin also "uninstall" a Windows primal from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows x for gratuitous from Windows 7 and viii don't have a unique Windows 10 primal. This can but exist transferred to one other machine (not if you upgraded from an OEM central). 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 yous take a digital license, though your key isn't shown here:

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If y'all take 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."

Y'all can also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the aforementioned page and providing your login information.

Find your key from inside Windows

Entering the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM cardinal embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS. Notwithstanding, these commands didn't return any keys on other 2 machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 beingness activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice go OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

In that location's also a commonly cited Visual Bones script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (non those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You lot can download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

We downloaded a variety of utilities that tin can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry besides as 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 one or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey - Found both the embedded OEM key as well as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Function and Adobe products (strangely, Net Explorer was besides included in our results, though no primal 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 also found both our retail and OEM keys, and can load the SOFTWARE hive file from another Windows installation.

Windows ten Product Cardinal Tool - Made past the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM key merely didn't detect the retail license on our Windows To Become drive.

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

Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail key but not the UEFI OEM key. This software can as well load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows 10 Pro install equally Enterprise.

Find your cardinal from outside Windows

If you tin can't boot into Windows and desire to call back that key, you can still access this data from an external environment such every bit a Windows To Go bulldoze, or past attaching your not-booting Windows drive to another machine.

Annotation that if yous're recovering the key from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting bulldoze with your Windows central is offline by default and volition have to exist enabled in Deejay Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the drive and ready it as "online." Equally mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed volition permit you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

Yous can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the cardinal is not in plain text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and wait for "DigitalProductId" in the right panel.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your Os bulldoze 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 amongst other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor tin load hive files from other installations:

  • Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via First)
  • Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it'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 as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • To unload the hive, select the proper name you chose and go to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows key via Linux was as simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't find any 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 tin can exist installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn't return a valid cardinal when decoding the product ID inside the tool, though if you had to y'all could excerpt the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If you have a kick disc around, Chntpw (too known equally Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is role of many all-in-i recovery solutions such as Ultimate Kick CD and Hiren's Kick CD.

Here'south how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal and and then 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 united states of america a valid central):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although it's convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want to use 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 desire 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 auto is besides possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft'south servers, information technology volition prevent future conflicts from multiple machines using the same cardinal.

Enter the following line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key from the Windows registry (hither 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, we 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 existence linked to a Microsoft account. And once again, this was for a retail fundamental that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned every bit a Windows To Go drive and plugged into some other motorcar 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 after several hardware changes.

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