If you purchased a new Windows PC preinstalled in recent years (Windows 10, or Windows 8), you may have noticed some changes to the outside of your device.
The biggest noticeable change is the absence of the key product, which was on the holographic Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker on computers pre-installed with Windows 7 or earlier versions of Microsoft's operating system.
From Windows 8 onwards, the information these are no longer in the COA, but are built into the BIOS. So if after formatting you reinstall the same version of Windows that came with your computer, it should activate automatically.
If you still want to record this key product of your operating system, it is quite easy to do.
Open a PowerShell window and run the following command:
(Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from SoftwareLicensingService').OA3xOriginalProductKey
If you don't see anything showing up, it means your system doesn't include the Windows key in the BIOS, as is often the case with home computers, devices using OEM System Builder, or those originally sold with a permission of Windows 10.
Network administrators that manage licenses using key management services can have information about computers on their network using a different set of options for the same PowerShell command.
To see all the details about the current license status of a machine, use the following command:
Get-WMIObject -Class SoftwareLicensingService | Select-Object -Property *
(Be sure to include the asterisk at the end of this command.)
To save the key, click the PowerShell window, drag the mouse pointer over the entire 25 character key, and then right-click.
Although you will not see a dialog open, the characters you chose have already been copied to the Clipboard. Paste the key into a text file and save it in a safe place.
