How to Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key?

Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key

We hope the below article helped you to Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key as we have tried to cover all the methods to help you find your key and Microsoft keeps changing its approaches to tackle its licenses. Here's your step by step guide to finding it.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade

There are several types of windows licenses with different terms of use. 

1. OEM keys, if once connected to a computer system, cannot be shifted to another system. They require a specific system to connect to. These systems are auto-applied from your UEFI/BIOS while you reinstall the windows on your contemporary computer system. You have also got the option to retrieve it manually.
2. Whereas Retail keys are purchased from Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Unlike OEM keys these can be transferred to another computer system and the process is carried out automatically for a digital license. You have also got an option to uninstall a windows key.
3. Those who upgraded to Windows 10 without charge from Windows 7 and 8 haven't got a novel Windows 10 key. this may solely be transferred to 1 alternative computer system (not if you upgraded from an aftermarket key). Free upgrade licenses area unit a digital claim.

Steps to Check if you Have a Digital License

Your query will be answered through your windows 10 settings app page for displaying your activation information including your digital license confirmation. Here’s how to find it.

Open settings > click on update & security > hit the Activation option.\

A confirmation message will pop up on your screen if you have a digital license that says:

“Windows is activated with a digital license” OR

“ Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft Account”.

Also, in the bottom on the same page click on the “Add a Microsoft Account” option to link your Microsoft account to a Windows
license which will prompt you to enter your login credentials.

Steps to Find your Key from Inside Windows

In order to display the OEM key embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS, you will have to type the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell. However, these commands didn't return any keys on the other two machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 being activated.

wmic path software licensing service get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

Powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey"

You will also find a commonly cited visual basic script that will allow you to retrieve the registry-based Windows key that you won’t find in the system's UEFI/BIOS. Below is the script that you can copy and paste into the notepad and save it as a.vbs file. Following that, double click on it to launch the file.

Option Explicit

Dim objshell,path,DigitalID, Result

Set objshell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'Set registry key path

Path = "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\"

'Registry key value

DigitalID = objshell.RegRead(Path & "DigitalProductId")

Dim ProductName,ProductID,ProductKey,ProductData

'Get ProductName, ProductID, ProductKey

ProductName = "Product Name: " & objshell.RegRead(Path & "ProductName")

ProductID = "Product ID: " & objshell.RegRead(Path & "ProductID")

ProductKey = "Installed Key: " & ConvertToKey(DigitalID)

ProductData = ProductName & vbNewLine & ProductID & vbNewLine & ProductKey

'Show messbox if save to a file

If vbYes = MsgBox(ProductData & vblf & vblf & "Save to a file?", vbYesNo + vbQuestion, "BackUp Windows Key Information")
then

Save ProductData

End If

'Convert binary to chars

Function ConvertToKey(Key)

Const KeyOffset = 52

Dim isWin8, Maps, i, j, Current, KeyOutput, Last, keypart1, insert

'Check if OS is Windows 8

isWin8 = (Key(66) \ 6) And 1

Key(66) = (Key(66) And &HF7) Or ((isWin8 And 2) * 4)

i = 24

Maps = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"

Do

Current= 0

j = 14

Do

Current = Current* 256

Current = Key(j + KeyOffset) + Current

Key(j + KeyOffset) = (Current \ 24)

Current=Current Mod 24

j = j -1

Loop While j >= 0

i = i -1

KeyOutput = Mid(Maps,Current+ 1, 1) & KeyOutput

Last = Current

Loop While i >= 0

If (isWin8 = 1) Then

keypart1 = Mid(KeyOutput, 2, Last)

insert = "N"

KeyOutput = Replace(KeyOutput, keypart1, keypart1 & insert, 2, 1, 0)

If Last = 0 Then KeyOutput = insert & KeyOutput

End If

ConvertToKey = Mid(KeyOutput, 1, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 6, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 11, 5) & "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 16, 5)
& "-" & Mid(KeyOutput, 21, 5)

End Function

'Save data to a file

Function Save(Data)

Dim fso, fName, txt,objshell,UserName

Set objshell = CreateObject("wscript.shell")

'Get current user name

UserName = objshell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%UserName%")

'Create a text file on desktop

fName = "C:\Users\" & UserName & "\Desktop\WindowsKeyInfo.txt"

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

Set txt = fso.CreateTextFile(fName)

txt.Writeline Data

txt.Close

End Function

Steps to Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key Using Third-Party Tools

We downloaded a spread of which are UEFI/BIOS-based utilities and may retrieve retail keys from the Windows register. In testing, a number of the applications found each the register and UEFI/BIOS keys, whereas others solely worked for one or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey: Among your currently running copy of Windows, found both the embedded OEM key and the retail key. Additionally, it also includes keys for several different applications like Microsoft workplace and Adobe product (strangely, net mortal will be conjointly enclosed in your results, tho' no key will be provided). Like a number of the opposite tools on this list, ProduKey will load Windows keys from external sources/drives.

ShowKeyPlus: This utility will conjointly find each of your retail and OEM keys, and might load the code hive file from another Windows installation.

Windows 10Product Key Tool: created by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool will settle your UEFI OEM key however will not notice the retail license on your Windows to travel drive.

Winkeyfinder: You will find your retail key but Dell’s UEFI OEM key won’t be displayed.

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

Steps to Find your Key from Outside Windows

This step is useful when you can't boot your Windows but anyway you want to Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key. By going into Windows to go drive, or by linking your non-booting windows drive to another device can let you have access to your Windows data. (make sure your non-booting windows drive is set as “online” as it is set as “offline” by default.

To set it offline as online, enable it from Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and then Right-click the drive and set it as "online." As mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will let you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

Or you can also go to your digital license directly from your windows registry (Regedit via Start) though the key is not in plain 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 drive at Windows\System32\Config -- look for the file named SOFTWARE.

However, when we tested the Produkey and Showkey, they loaded the SOFTWARE hive file and displayed the key for an external  Windows installation via Windows To Go.

1. Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter Regedit via Start)
2. Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it's selected
3. Click File > Load Hive and go to the SOFTWARE file in Windows\System32\Config on your other drive
4. Now Type a name for this external hive file
5. The hive will then appear as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
6. To unload the hive, click on the name you chose and then open File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows key via Linux is as simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though you couldn't find 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 -1

The command-line tool Chntpw can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software will also not return a valid key when decoding the product ID within the tool, though if you want to you can extract the hex data and decode that in a different location.

If you have a boot disc around, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-one 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 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):

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

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId