How To Find Your Windows 10 Product Key

Microsoft licensing has become a lot easier to understand but still some are unsure where to locate your Windows 10 product key.

If you plan to install windows 10 on a new system or transfer the license to another machine you will need the product key to activate Windows 10.

There are many different ways to find your product key, I will go through all of them below.

There are many different ways that windows 10 product keys are stored such as, on a sticker, embeded in to the computers motherboard, digitally, online, KMS and a few more. Below I will go through the steps you will need to take to find your windows 10 product key.

How To Find Your Windows 10 Product Key On Preinstalled System

You can extract the windows 10 product key from any preinstalled machine by running a command from CMD. You can run this command by following these steps

Click start type in cmd then right click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”
Or Press and hold Windows key + X type in CMD and hit enter
If you get a prompt about user access control click yes
In the command prompt window enter the command wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey as shown below and hit enter
Your windows 10 product key will now be shown. (Please note I have blurred out my windows 10 product code for obvious reasons)

How To Find an OEM Product Key In Windows 10

Typically older machines come with what is called an OEM Product key. This license key can be re-used if you wish to re-install windows 10 on the existing machine.

To find your OEM key follow these steps:

An OEM product key is written on a label which is attached to the base of your machine. The OEM label will look like the one below.
If you have a laptop you might need to open up the cover to locate this label
I recommend that you use the previous method finding the product key via command prompt to confirm that the OEM license is the one installed on your system

Windows 10 Product Key Finder Tool

If the above two methods do not work for you a tool called passfab will be able to recover your product key. Follow the steps below.

Download passfab
Install the software
Launch the software.
On the main screen click Get Key
Your windows 10 serial will now be shown

How To Recover Windows 10 Product Key From Bios

If your machine has the windows 10 product key embedded in the systems UEFI / BIOS then all you need to do is reinstall windows 10 and the product code should automatically get applied and activate windows 10.

If you do plan to reinstall windows 10 I prefer to export the windows 10 product key just to be safe. To recover windows 10 product key from bios follow these steps.

1. First open powershell by clicking on your start menu and type powershell
2. Right click on the application and select run as administrator
3. If you get prompted by UAC click Yes
4. in the powershell window type this command
5. (Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey
6. hit enter
7. The Product key will now show

How To Find Windows 10 Digital License

If you purchased your Windows 10 license key directly from Microsoft or Amazon (These are the only 2 company’s that are authorised to sell keys) then you can recover the digital key online.

Microsoft

If you purchased Windows 10 from Microsoft you can get the digital key from the Microsoft store, to do that follow these steps

Go to Microsoft Store
Sign in
Go to Order History
Click on Product key/Install
Your digital key will show here

Amazon

Go to the Amazon website
Sign in
Go to Your Games and Software Library
Search for windows 10
Your digital key will show here

How To Check If Windows 10 Is Activated

To check if your windows 10 is activated follow these steps.

Click the start menu and click on settings / The Cog icon
Click on Update and Security
Click on Activation in the menu on the left
Your activation status will now show under the Activation section. Below you can see that my machine is activated with a digital license

How To Deactivate A Windows 10 Product Key

If you plan to reinstall your operating system or simply want to deactivate the windows 10 product key on your system you can by following these steps.

Click start and type in command prompt and right click on the application and select run as administrator
If you get prompted by UAC click YES
in the command prompt type in slmgr /upk then hit enter
You should then see the message uninstall product key successfully
To confirm it has been deactivated do the following
Click the start menu and click on settings / The Cog icon
Click on Update and Security
Click on Activation in the menu on the left
You should now see Windows is not activated