Find my vista product key

With the pending release of Windows 11 , however, those blissful days may be over, and users may find they need to know their Windows 10 product key after all. Your Windows 10 product key should be listed on a sticker located on your computer hardware somewhere—typically in the most inaccessible spot possible. But before you go crawling behind your desk looking for a digit alphanumeric code printed in fine print on the backside of your PC, there are less strenuous ways to track down your Windows 10 product key.

This how-to tutorial shows you how to find your Windows 10 product key using the power of the operating system itself. Before we begin, note that the success of any of these methods is largely dependent on how your PC was activated.

If you activated Windows 10 by upgrading from a valid Windows 7 or 8 installation or with the computer's recent purchase, you are likely to find the product key with most of these methods. However, if your PC was activated as part of an organization's licensing agreement, finding a product key may be more problematic.

The most direct method for finding your Windows 10 product key is from the command line. Type "cmd" into the Windows 10 desktop search box and then right-click the command line result and select "run as administrator" from the context menu. Type this command at the prompt:. As you can see in Figure A , the command will display your current Windows 10 product key. If you are using Windows 10 PowerShell , the process is similar.

Type this command at the prompt to reveal the product key as shown in Figure B. As you might imagine, the product key is stored in the Windows 10 Registry File, so it is possible to find the code there if you know the right key. Type "regedit" into the Windows 10 desktop search and select the appropriate item in the results. Navigate to this key:. Note: In my case, the Windows 10 product key displayed by both the command prompt and PowerShell methods are the same.

In the registry example, however, the product keys is different. The best explanation I can suggest is that because I upgraded from Home to Pro on the example PC, the product key displayed is for the upgrade to Pro or vice versa. If you have a better solution, please let us know in the discussion.

There are third-party vendors offering applications that can locate and display your Windows 10 product key as well, but they essentially do the same thing we did here without involving someone else's programming and potential security issues. See Activation in Windows for more info. If you're reinstalling Windows 10 or Windows 11 due to a motherboard problem or some other hardware issue, see Reactivating Windows 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.

Windows 11 Windows 10 Windows 8. A copy of Windows 10 or Windows 11 from an authorized retailer. A digital copy of Windows 10 or Windows 11 from an authorized retailer.

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