Some time ago, activation key for windows was visible on the sticker which was on each PC or together with CD with OS installes. Nowadays, there is no stickers and product key is stored in BIOS. In some cases this way will be helpfull in case you will reinstall system because you dont need to search for sticker with key because key is already on PC 🙂 Of course it could be situation you would need to know this key.
Below I will show you simple ways how to check it.
CMD
Example 1 is the simples one. You need just use built-in command line in Windows. Search for CMD in windows start or Windows Terminal in Windows 11. Type this there:
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wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey |
License key will be visible as a output.
Powershell
It is similar to CMD example. Here we will use powershell and command like below:
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powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey" |
Output will be the same like above.
Registry
Activation key is also saved in the registry. You can search it for by regedit.exe. It is located in key BackupProductKeyDefault in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform
Of course you can use Powershell to get the registry key value. It could be done by using this command.
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get-itempropertyvalue -path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform' -name BackupProductKeyDefault |
