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Obtain Your Windows Serial Key

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This can be your Windows 7 or Windows 8 retail or OEM product key before upgrading. This is the product key you want if you encounter product activation issues in Windows 10.

On the Anniversary Update for Windows 10, Microsoft introduced a lot of new changes and features for PC, including a way to make activation a little easier. Although activating Windows 10 was already a simple process, it wasn't easy to re-activate the operating system after a hardware change.

Starting with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, your product key is no longer only attached to your hardware — you can also link it to your Microsoft account. This new change allows you to re-activate Windows 10 without having to contact Microsoft when you make significant changes to the hardware on your PC, including replacing the motherboard, processor, or hard drive.

How To Find Windows Product Key Using CMD, PowerShell, And Windows Registry. You can find your Windows product key in an email from Microsoft guys. To get back Windows serial key using. Each time you install Windows, a product license key is entered into the installation wizard. This key is saved in the Windows registry. The product license is saved in the registry and evaluated each time you load a Windows update.

Associating a Windows 10 license to a Microsoft account is actually an automated process if you're signing into your PC with a Microsoft account. But if you're using a local user account, you'll need to link your product key with your Microsoft account manually.

In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to link your product key with a Microsoft account to simplify re-activation.

How to associate your Windows 10 license to a Microsoft account

To make sure that everything works, you need to make sure that Windows 10 is properly activated on your computer, you can easily do this with the following steps:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Click on Update & security.
  3. Click on Activation.

The Activation page should read 'Windows is activated with a digital license' (or product key).

Once you know that your copy of Windows 10 is properly activated, you need to add a Microsoft account that you want to remember your product key. However, it's important to remember that this process will change your account type from local to a Microsoft account.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Click on Accounts.
  3. Click on You info.

  4. Click the Sign in with your Microsoft account instead link.

  5. Complete your sign-in information.

  6. Click Sign in.

  7. Type your current password.

  8. Click Next.

  9. Click the Set a PIN button, or the Skip this step link to complete the process.

After you completed the steps mentioned above, you could remove the Microsoft account, but reverting the process will also remove the device from your account, which will undo the association.

You can verify that your digital license is linked to your Microsoft account by using these simple steps:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Click on Update & security.

  3. Click on Activation.

The Activation page should now read 'Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account'. Additionally, you can sign-in to your Microsoft account using your web browser and navigating to the Devices section. If you find your computer listed, it means that the license is linked.

Serial key not saved streaming audio recorder. What do you think about the new activation approach to associate your Windows 10 license with your Microsoft account? Tell us in the comments below.

More Windows 10 resources

For more help articles, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you can visit the following resources:

RECOMMENDED: Click here to fix Windows errors and improve PC performance

Unlike Windows 7 PCs, computers pre-installed with an edition of Windows 8 and Windows 10 don’t have a Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) sticker with their original product key printed on it. This is because, the product key is embedded in the PC’s UEFI firmware and can’t be seen just by accessing the UEFI.

While using a Windows 10 PC, you don’t need to view or backup your Windows 10 product key as we can clean install or reinstall the same edition of Windows 10 on the same PC and activate the copy of Windows 10 without having to enter the product key.

That said, there might be instances where you want to view your Windows 10 product key. May be, you want to uninstall the product key and use it on a different computer, or may be, you want to backup the product key before making substantial changes your PC’s hardware.

There are plenty of software out there to view or retrieve your Windows product key. While not all of them work great on Windows 10 and some of them out there even show a different key than the actual product key, here are three methods to view or retrieve your Windows 10 product key for free.

In the first method, we are going to use the reliable NirSoft ProduKey to view the product key. In the second method, we will use the popular Belarc Advisor software (free version) to view the product key. And a VBS script will be used in the third method to view Windows 10 key.

Method 1

Use ProduKey to View or recover Windows 10 product key

Step 1: Visit this page, scroll down to see download links, and click on the latest version of ProduKey link to download the zip file containing ProduKey. Extract the zip file to a new folder to get ProduKey.exe file.

Step 2: Run ProduKey.exe file to view your Windows 10 product key.

Method 2

View Windows 10 product key using Belarc Advisor

Step 1: Download Belarc Advisor (free) from this page and then run the installer to get it installed on your Windows 10 PC.

Step 2: Launch Belarc Advisor with administrative rights. Upon launching, the tool will automatically begin analysing your computer.

Step 3: Once the report is ready, it will be opened in your default web browser.

Step 4: On the left-side of the report (see above picture), under in page links, click Software licenses link to view your Windows 10 product key as well as product keys of other installed software.

Method 3

Obtain Your Windows Serial Key Replacement

View Windows 10 product key using a simple script

Windows 10 Free Serial Key

Step 1: Click here to download Win10Key.zip file. Extract the zip file to get Win10Key.vbs file.

Get Windows Serial Key

Step 2: Double-click on Win10Key.vbs file to view your product key.

Warning: This method is not very accurate, meaning the script might show a wrong product at times. So, we recommend you use ProduKey or Belarc Advisor over this script.

Windows Xp Serial Key

Have you backed up your Windows 10 product key?