In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product central sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer's 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 organization. Certainly a better approach overall. In other instances, for example if you built and installed your Os, your key is associated with your Microsoft account, so there is no way to "lose information technology" anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been irresolute and improving the fashion it handles Windows licenses. Nosotros'll cover all you need to know in this article, from sometime school means to retrieve keys, to the more modern approaches to brand good use of your licenses and what restrictions may employ depending on your type of license.

Windows ten introduced a "Digital Entitlement" element to Microsoft's license which links your Windows cardinal to an ID generated based on your PC'due south hardware. But considering your hardware can significantly alter 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 activate a re-create of the operating organization only by logging in with valid online credentials. Then, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you mostly shouldn't accept to search for your original Windows x central. Nosotros will explain that in meliorate detail in a minute.

In that location may exist other scenarios where you may withal want to manually observe a Windows key stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically being practical during installation. Not to mention that different weather apply for non-OEM retail keys, likewise as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 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'southward Note: This feature was originally published on Dec 2018. It's only as relevant today, and so nosotros've bumped it every bit role 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 full general dominion of thumb:

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and can't exist transferred to another machine. Again, these should be machine-practical from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a mod boxed PC, but you can too retrieve them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased direct from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can be transferred to another machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you tin can also "uninstall" a Windows cardinal from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for costless from Windows vii and 8 don't take a unique Windows ten central. This can only be transferred to one other motorcar (not if you lot upgraded from an OEM key). Gratuitous upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do I take a digital license?

The Windows ten Settings app has a page for displaying your activation information, including whether you lot have a digital license, though your fundamental isn't shown hither:

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 account."

Y'all tin can also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Business relationship" on the lesser of the same page and providing your login data.

Detect your central from inside Windows

Entering the post-obit lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM key embedded in our arrangement's UEFI/BIOS. Nonetheless, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines nosotros used for testing despite Windows 10 existence activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice go OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

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

At that place'south also a unremarkably cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (non those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). Yous tin download the script hither. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

We downloaded a diverseness of utilities that can recollect retail keys from the Windows registry as well as those that are UEFI/BIOS-spring. In testing, some of the applications institute both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others only worked for 1 or the other:

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

Windows 10 Product Central Tool - Made by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM central but didn't discover the retail license on our Windows To Go bulldoze.

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

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

Observe your key from outside Windows

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

Note that if yous're recovering the central 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). Correct-click the drive and set it every bit "online." Equally mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will allow you load the registry hive file from some other Windows installation.

Y'all can too navigate to your license straight from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the key is non 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 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. As well 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 it'southward 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 proper name y'all chose and go to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-leap Windows key via Linux was every bit simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't find whatever GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would call up the license from a registry hive file:

sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM | tail -1

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 key 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 lot take a boot disc around, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Password & 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 final and then display the hex value for the cardinal in that hive (use dpi instead of hex to decode the key within chntpw, though over again, this didn't give us a valid fundamental):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although information technology's convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, yous'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you lot want to use another license.

Open the installation media in File Explorer, scan to the Sources binder and create a new text file named PID.txt in the Sources folder. In PID.txt, y'all desire the following text, where the Xs represent to your license key.

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

Uninstalling a retail fundamental from a given car is also possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft's servers, information technology volition foreclose hereafter conflicts from multiple machines using the same cardinal.

Enter the following line in an ambassador Control Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key 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 merely by clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation page.

Ane click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not existence linked to a Microsoft account. And once 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 another motorcar with a dissimilar hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving plenty and yous should accept no issues validating your Bone license on a new machine or after several hardware changes.

Keep Reading. Software at TechSpot

  • Ways to Free Upward Storage Space on Windows
  • Windows To Go: How to Install and Run Windows x from a USB Drive
  • "Run as Administrator": What Does It Mean?
  • A Compilation of Command Prompt Tips, Tricks & Cool Things Y'all Tin can Exercise