Find your Windows product key

A Windows product key is a 25-character code used to activate Windows. It looks like this:

PRODUCT KEY: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Locate your product key for Windows 10

Depending on how you got your copy of Windows 10, you’ll need either a 25-character product key or a digital license to activate it. A digital license (called a digital entitlement in Windows 10, Version 1511) is a method of activation in Windows 10 that doesn’t require you to enter a product key. Without one of these, you won’t be able to activate your device.

Where to find your product key depends on how you got your copy of Windows.

Select any of the following to see more information:

The product key is preinstalled on your PC, included with the packaging the PC came in, or included on the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) attached to the PC. For more info, contact your hardware manufacturer, and for pictures of authentic product keys and COA labels, see How to tell your hardware is genuine.

The product key is on a label or card inside the box that Windows came in. For more info, contact the retailer that sold you Windows 10. How to tell your software is genuine.

Find your product key in the confirmation email you received after buying Windows 10 or in a digital locker accessible through the retailer’s website.

The product key is in the confirmation email you received after buying your digital copy of Windows. Microsoft only keeps a record of product keys if you purchased from the Microsoft online store. You can find out if you purchased from Microsoft in your Microsoft account Order history.

If you upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you should have a digital license instead of a product key.

If you bought Windows 10 Home, Professional, or Upgrade to Pro in the Windows 10 Store app, you’ll receive a digital license instead of a product key. You can use the digital license for activation.

If your product key is scratched, blurred, or otherwise unusable, contact the retailer who sold you the product. If you aren’t able to get help from your retailer or have already tried and couldn’t get a working key, call Microsoft Support.

For more information about digital licenses and product keys in Windows 10, see the “Methods of Activation” section in Activate Windows 10.

Locate your product key for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1

A product key is usually required when uninstalling or reinstalling Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Generally, if you bought a physical copy of Windows, the product key should be on a label or card inside the box that Windows came in. If Windows came preinstalled on your PC, the product key should appear on a sticker on your device. If you’ve lost or can’t find the product key, contact the manufacturer. To ensure your product key is genuine, see How to tell your software is genuine and How to tell your hardware is genuine.

Related links

For info about how to tell if your copy of Windows is genuine Microsoft software, see the How to tell page.

For more Windows 10 download info, see Download Windows 10.

If you need installation media to install or reinstall Windows, see Create installation media for Windows to learn how to create your own installation media using either a USB flash drive or a DVD.

If you need more help with activation, see Activate Windows 10.

If you’re getting an activation error, see Get help with Windows activation errors.

If you’re reinstalling Windows 10, you might not need a Windows product key. See Activation in Windows 10 for more info.

If you’re reinstalling Windows 10 due to a motherboard problem or some other hardware issue, see Reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change.

If you’re looking for product keys for Office, apps, games, and more, see Find your Microsoft downloads and product keys

Find your Windows product key

A Windows product key is a 25-character code used to activate Windows. It looks like this:

PRODUCT KEY: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Locate your product key for Windows 10

Depending on how you got your copy of Windows 10, you’ll need either a 25-character product key or a digital license to activate it. A digital license (called a digital entitlement in Windows 10, Version 1511) is a method of activation in Windows 10 that doesn’t require you to enter a product key. Without one of these, you won’t be able to activate your device.

Where to find your product key depends on how you got your copy of Windows.

Select any of the following to see more information:

The product key is preinstalled on your PC, included with the packaging the PC came in, or included on the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) attached to the PC. For more info, contact your hardware manufacturer, and for pictures of authentic product keys and COA labels, see How to tell your hardware is genuine.

The product key is on a label or card inside the box that Windows came in. For more info, contact the retailer that sold you Windows 10. How to tell your software is genuine.

Find your product key in the confirmation email you received after buying Windows 10 or in a digital locker accessible through the retailer’s website.

The product key is in the confirmation email you received after buying your digital copy of Windows. Microsoft only keeps a record of product keys if you purchased from the Microsoft online store. You can find out if you purchased from Microsoft in your Microsoft account Order history.

If you upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you should have a digital license instead of a product key.

If you bought Windows 10 Home, Professional, or Upgrade to Pro in the Windows 10 Store app, you’ll receive a digital license instead of a product key. You can use the digital license for activation.

If your product key is scratched, blurred, or otherwise unusable, contact the retailer who sold you the product. If you aren’t able to get help from your retailer or have already tried and couldn’t get a working key, call Microsoft Support.

For more information about digital licenses and product keys in Windows 10, see the “Methods of Activation” section in Activate Windows 10.

Locate your product key for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1

A product key is usually required when uninstalling or reinstalling Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Generally, if you bought a physical copy of Windows, the product key should be on a label or card inside the box that Windows came in. If Windows came preinstalled on your PC, the product key should appear on a sticker on your device. If you’ve lost or can’t find the product key, contact the manufacturer. To ensure your product key is genuine, see How to tell your software is genuine and How to tell your hardware is genuine.

Related links

For info about how to tell if your copy of Windows is genuine Microsoft software, see the How to tell page.

For more Windows 10 download info, see Download Windows 10.

If you need installation media to install or reinstall Windows, see Create installation media for Windows to learn how to create your own installation media using either a USB flash drive or a DVD.

If you need more help with activation, see Activate Windows 10.

If you’re getting an activation error, see Get help with Windows activation errors.

If you’re reinstalling Windows 10, you might not need a Windows product key. See Activation in Windows 10 for more info.

If you’re reinstalling Windows 10 due to a motherboard problem or some other hardware issue, see Reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change.

If you’re looking for product keys for Office, apps, games, and more, see Find your Microsoft downloads and product keys

How to find your Windows product key

This article will show you how to find your Windows product key.

Digital License (Windows 10)

If your PC ever had Windows 10 installed and activated on it, it probably created a digital license. A digital license is a hash of your hardware that gets sent to Microsoft, along with the product key that was used to activate Windows on that computer. If you ever need to reinstall Windows, just choose «I don’t have a product key» during installation. Windows will contact the Microsoft Activation servers after installation, and activate with your digital license.

Note: If you activated Windows 10 using a valid Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 product key, you’ll also have a digital license.

Printed on a Certificate of Authenticity Sticker (Usually older PCs running Windows 7, Vista and XP)

If you have an older PC that came with Windows 7 or earlier, the product key is usually found on the Certificate of Authenticity sticker. The sticker is usually located on the underside of laptops, and could be on the top, sides, or bottom of a desktop tower. It looks something like this:

Embedded in the UEFI/BIOS (Usually newer PCs running Windows 8 or Windows 10)

Most new PCs sold in stores today come with the product key permanently embedded in the firmware. Instead of printing the product key on a sticker where it could be easily stolen or smudged off, manufacturers are now opting to store it in the UEFI or BIOS. The firmware is located in ROM on the motherboard, which means if you upgrade other components like your hard drive, RAM, graphics card, or even your CPU, you should still be able to activate Windows.

If you reinstall Windows, it will communicate with the firmware to install the embedded key. There is no need to retrieve the key yourself. If you want to retrieve it, you can do so by running the following command in cmd or Windows PowerShell:

wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey

I purchased Windows 10 separately (Retail or OEM licenses)

You can purchase Windows 10 as a digital download, or you can buy it in the box at a brick and mortar store.

— For digital downloads through Microsoft

You should receive an email with your product key, sent to the Microsoft account that was used to purchase Windows 10 online. If you can’t find the email, check your spam folders. You can also get it by logging into your Microsoft account and going to the purchase history tab.

— For digital downloads through Amazon

— If you bought Windows 10 in the retail packaging

Look in the box for a card with your product key printed on it. It’ll be about the size of a credit card with a 25-digit alphanumeric string printed on it.

Azure Dev Tools for Teaching (formerly known as Microsoft Imagine and Dreamspark)

This program provides students with Microsoft services, tools, training and operating systems at a discount or for free. Check with your school or university to find out if you can access this subscription and how to get assistance with the software licensing.

How to recover your Windows product key

Technical Level : Basic

If you are planning to reinstall Windows but you can’t find your product key, this article will show you where and how you can find your product key.

The key could be:

• Printed on a Certificate of Authenticity sticker
• Stored in the Windows Registry
• Embedded in the PC’s UEFI firmware

Note that if you are currently running Windows 10 and wish to reinstall the operating system, you don’t need your product key. After the reinstall, Windows 10 will detect that it has been reinstalled on a previously activated system and will automatically reactivate.

Printed on a Certificate of Authenticity Sticker

If your PC came with Windows 7 or earlier, then your product key will be printed on a COA sticker. This sticker verifies that the computer came with a genuine copy of Windows. You will need to examine your computer to find the sticker. On laptops, it’s usually on the bottom side. On desktops, it could be on the back, sides, or top. It looks something like this:

Embedded in the PC’s UEFI firmware

If you have a newer PC that came with Windows 8 or Windows 10, then your product key likely won’t be on a sticker. Instead, computer manufacturers now embed the key right into the computer’s UEFI firmware. Unlike the COA sticker, the embedded key can’t be smudged off, stolen or erased (easily).

If you want to extract the UEFI key, the process is simple. Open the Start menu, type powershell and then run the program.

Next type the following command in the PowerShell window and hit Enter.

You will be presented with the key in the window.

Stored in the Windows Registry

If your product key isn’t embedded in the firmware or you’re missing your COA sticker, you’re not out of luck as long as you haven’t formatted your computer. You can still recover the key because Windows stores it in the registry. Here is how:

1. Open a new Notepad window

2. Copy and paste the following text into the window

3. Click File > Save As and save the file to your desktop as productkey.vbs. It’s important to include the .vbs extension because this is a Windows Scripting Host file.

4. Close Notepad and double-click the file. Wait a few seconds, and then you will be presented with a popup displaying your product key:

3 Methods to Recover Windows Product Key from Dead or Unbootable Windows

If you’re a computer technician or the neighborhood tech geek, quite frequently you could find yourself having to reinstall Windows for people. One very common and annoying problem that often arises is the user doesn’t have their Windows license to hand and you have to spend time in retrieving the genuine Windows product key from the system if the hard drive is readable. A big pain these days is Windows product key stickers on many machines such as laptops and netbooks are paper and don’t have the plastic protective coating meaning the key can easily become faint and impossible to read accurately.

There are a few ways to retrieve a key from an unbootable computer and most of them involve having access to another working computer. For example, taking out the hard drive and attaching it to a working machine, running a tool that can read product keys, load the registry hive from within the program and retrieve the product key. Or you can boot up PCRegedit, load the registry and then decrypt the key from a working computer. All those steps work but are a bit fiddly and time consuming.

We’ve tried very hard to look for a linux live CD that can retrieve the license key but couldn’t find an obvious one that doesn’t involve a long process. But thankfully there are other ways you can do this by using very popular Live Windows CD’s that can get the key from a Windows system that cannot boot.

Special Note: An important thing which needs mentioning is there are 2 different types of Windows product key you might have installed on your system. If you have an OEM machine made by a manufacturer such as Dell, Sony, Asus etc, and have never re-installed Windows, your product key will be different. This is a special generic key pre-installed at the factory and is NOT the same key as the one on a genuine sticker and cannot be used on a standard Windows re-install. If your key is from a sticker or has been typed in manually, these methods will work fine.

Method One

The first tool to try and recover your Windows product key is Lazesoft Recover My Password Home Edition. It’s a relatively new program released in 2012 (the Home ed.), and is designed specifically to do 2 things; recover your Windows product key from any version of Windows including Windows 2000 right up to Windows 8, and secondly it can reset passwords from local administrator and domain accounts. It’s also about as easy to use as you could expect this type of recovery task to get.

1. Download Recover My Password Home Edition and install the program. More experienced users can extract the installer and make the program portable with Universal Extractor.

2. Start Recover My Password and press “Burn Bootable CD/USB Disk Now”, then click Next.

3. On the media selection screen you can choose to either burn the Recover My Password WinPE image straight to CD, write onto USB flash drive, or save it as an ISO file for writing out later. Press Commit when you have inserted the media or chosen an ISO save location. Depending on your system, some files will automatically download from Microsoft.com that are part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) to help create the image.

4. When it’s finished, close the program and boot the computer you want to retrieve the key from with the CD or USB drive. Press enter at the Boot menu or let the 30 second timer countdown.

5. At the welcome screen click on the big drop down menu at the top and select “Find Windows Product Key”. If you have special third party drivers which are needed to recognize your drives, they can also be loaded from here. Click Next and then confirm in the popup you are using the program for non commercial use only.

6. Now Lazesoft Recover My Password will search for and then display the Windows product key(s) for your system. The good thing is the program will automatically search all active Windows partitions you have on the system, and will show all the Windows product keys it comes across.

Lazesoft Recover My Password Home Edition is quite an impressive tool and seemed to work flawlessly on every system we tested it on. It’s also not architecture or Windows version specific so you can easily create the CD on Windows XP 32-bit and it will retrieve the keys on Windows 7 or 8 64-bit installs without any trouble.

Method Two

This second method uses the wildly popular Hirens Boot CD and an included utility from Nirsoft called Produkey which can retrieve Windows and also Office keys from a an offline Windows system.

1. Download Hirens Boot CD if you don’t already have it and burn to a CD, or if you want to, put Hiren on a USB stick.

2. Boot the CD or USB, choose the Mini XP option and wait for the Windows desktop to load.

3. Click on the Hiren menu in the system tray and navigate to Passwords / Keys -> Product Keys -> ProduKey (Windows Key Viewer).

4. When Produkey loads press F9 to open the Select Source window. Click on the second option down “Load the product keys of external Windows installations from all disks currently plugged to your computer” and then click OK.

The Windows and Office keys will then be displayed for you to write down or save to a text file.

Joshua’s Key Reader is also present in the menu as “XP Key Reader / Changer” and can also read Vista and 7 keys. Refer to section 5b below on how to use it.

There’s another method to retrieve your Windows product key on the next page.