Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We'll cover all you need to know in this article, from old school ways to retrieve keys, to the more modern approaches to make 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 can significantly change if you upgrade your windows 10 default product key free download, this entitlement was expanded to become a "Digital License" when 's Anniversary Update arrived.
This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating system simply by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you have a newer Windows PC windows 10 default product key free download 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 detail in a minute.
Not to mention that different conditions apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well 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's Note: This feature was originally published on December It's just as relevant today, so we've bumped it as part of our ThrowbackThursday initiative.
There are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. As a general rule of thumb:. The Windows 10 Settings app has a page for displaying your activation information, including whether you have a digital license, though your key isn't shown here:. 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 a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information. Windows 10 default product key free download, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 being activated. You can download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a.
Then double-click to launch the file. 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 key was provided. Listed our Windows 10 Pro install as Enterprise. If you can't boot into Windows and want to retrieve that key, you can 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 you're recovering the key 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. Right-click the drive and set it as "online. You can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows windows 10 default product key free download regedit via Start windows 10 default product key free download the key is not in plain text. Also note that ProduKey can search for Windows keys on computers at remote domains among other locations, and that the Windows Windows 10 default product key free download Editor can load hive files from other installations:.
The command-line tool Chntpw can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry windows 10 default product key free download. 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.
Here's how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal 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 us a valid key :.
In PID. 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 future conflicts from multiple machines using the same key. Enter the following line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key from the Windows registry here are more slmgr commands :.
As a final anecdote from testing, when we uninstalled and cleared the key from our Windows installation, we were able to reactivate that copy of Windows simply by clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation page. 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 as 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 should have no issues validating your OS license on a new machine or after several hardware changes. By Mark Turner October 29, In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product key sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer's manuals.
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 it" anymore.
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