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And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to find the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.Įditor's Note: This feature was originally published on December 2018. #HOW TO RETRIEVE WINDOWS 8 SERIAL NUMBER WINDOWS 10#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. There may be other scenarios where you may still want to manually find a Windows key stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically being applied during installation. We will explain that in better detail in a minute. So, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 key. 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. #HOW TO RETRIEVE WINDOWS 8 SERIAL NUMBER UPDATE#But because your hardware can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to become a "Digital License" when 2016's Anniversary Update (1607) arrived. ![]() 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. ![]() 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. Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. 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. But in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the machine's UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. In case the Windows installation has been performed by manually typing a OEM Product Key or using the free Windows 10 upgrade offer from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.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. Once executed, it will retrieve our Windows Product Key from the BIOS / UEFI and show it to us in a convenient pop-up window: The actual Product Key has been scrambled for obvious reasons. This handy tool can be downloaded here from the NeoSmart official blog. The tool is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. #HOW TO RETRIEVE WINDOWS 8 SERIAL NUMBER SOFTWARE#Luckily enough, there's a great freeware tool that comes to the rescue: it's called Windows 10 Product Key Tool and is made by NeoSmart technologies, the same guys that developed the great EasyBCD software (if you don't know it, check it out!). Whenever such things happens, we most certainly want (or would've wanted) a way to retrieve that product key before it's too late. However, it can become a huge problem if you ever need to type it, which is something that can always happen in some edge-case scenarious such as: relevant hardware upgrades, damaged/erased BIOS, OS upgrades, reinstall using a different ISO image and so on. This can be really good at times, because you won't ever need to remember or protect it - the system will do the hard work for you. #HOW TO RETRIEVE WINDOWS 8 SERIAL NUMBER INSTALL#The product key is now embedded into the computer BIOS or UEFI, and it can only be accessed there: this also means that we don't need to type it anymore, because it's automatically fetched by the OS during the install phase. Now almost every PC with a pre-installed copy of a Windows OS doesn't show any physical info or evidence of its product key, nor it features a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker on its back, battery bay or any other place. Do you remember the good old times when PC manufacturers used to apply those fancy stickers to the back of your laptop or desktop PC depicting your Windows Product Key? If you're a system administrator you probably already know that these times are gone since Windows 8. ![]()
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