How To See Your Windows 10 Product Key

In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product primal sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer's manuals. But in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the auto'southward 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 you built and installed your Os, your cardinal is associated with your Microsoft business relationship, so there is no way to "lose it" anymore. Read on for more than details.

Microsoft has been irresolute and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all y'all need to know in this commodity, from one-time school ways to retrieve keys, to the more modern approaches to brand good use 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's hardware. But because your hardware tin significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to become a "Digital License" when 2016's Anniversary Update (1607) arrived.

This ways your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you actuate a re-create of the operating organization simply by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if yous have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn't take to search for your original Windows 10 fundamental. We volition explain that in amend detail in a minute.

There may exist other scenarios where you may still want to manually observe a Windows central stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically beingness applied during installation. Not to mention that different atmospheric condition apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows x for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to find the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor's Note: This feature was originally published on December 2018. Information technology'south just as relevant today, so nosotros've bumped it as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. costless upgrade

In that location are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of utilize. As a general dominion of pollex:

OEM keys are shipped with a specific estimator and tin't be transferred to another machine. Again, these should be car-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a mod boxed PC, but you lot tin also think them manually.
Retail keys are purchased straight from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can exist transferred to another machine and that procedure should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin as well "uninstall" a Windows key from a given PC.
Those who upgraded to Windows ten for free from Windows seven and viii don't have a unique Windows ten fundamental. This can only be transferred to 1 other machine (not if yous upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do I take a digital license?

The Windows x Settings app has a folio for displaying your activation information, including whether you have a digital license, though your key isn't shown here:

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If you have a digital license, you should encounter "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft business relationship."

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

Find your fundamental from inside Windows

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

wmic path softwarelicensingservice become OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

There's also a unremarkably cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You can 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 tin can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry equally well every bit those that are UEFI/BIOS-jump. In testing, some of the applications institute both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others but worked for one or the other:

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

Windows x Product Key Tool - Made by the programmer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM primal simply didn't find the retail license on our Windows To Go bulldoze.

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

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

Find your cardinal from exterior Windows

If yous tin't kick into Windows and want to retrieve that key, you can however admission this data from an external environs such as a Windows To Get drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to another machine.

Note that if you're recovering the primal from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting bulldoze with your Windows fundamental is offline by default and will accept to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the drive and set information technology as "online." Every bit mentioned to a higher place, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will let you lot load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

You tin besides navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Outset) though the key is non in plain text. Become 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 Bone 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 cardinal for an external Windows installation via Windows To Get. Besides note that ProduKey tin 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 up the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Start)
Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so information technology'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-bound Windows cardinal via Linux was every bit elementary as inbound the post-obit line in a terminal, though we couldn't detect 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 -ane

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 central when decoding the product ID within the tool, though if you had to you could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If you accept a boot disc effectually, Chntpw (too known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is office of many all-in-one recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren'southward Boot 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 once again, this didn't give us a valid key):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Boosted resources

Although it'southward convenient to have your Windows cardinal automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if yous want to use some other license.

Open the installation media in File Explorer, browse to the Sources binder and create a new text file named PID.txt in the Sources folder. In PID.txt, you lot desire the following text, where the Xs represent to your license central.

[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 forbid future conflicts from multiple machines using the aforementioned key.

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

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

Equally a concluding anecdote from testing, when we 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.

I click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not existence linked to a Microsoft business relationship. And again, this was for a retail primal that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned as a Windows To Go drive and plugged into some other machine with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft'south activation is forgiving enough and you should have no problems validating your OS license on a new machine or later on several hardware changes.