In this article we show you how to know the Windows 10 key, a key that is necessary to be able to activate Windows 10 and enjoy the updates and configuration options that it offers us.
In the case of the Windows 10 key, it is a numerical code made up of 5 blocks of 5 numbers and letters. This code must be entered during the Windows 10 installation process.
You can also enter it once the installation process has finished. If you don’t have a valid key, the text Windows not activated will be displayed in the lower right corner of the screen.
In addition, the device will not receive updates and will not allow us to access the device configuration options. Come on, without a valid key it is of little or no use to install Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Where is the Windows 10 key
Depending on how you purchased your computer or Windows, the registration key can be found in different places.
license sticker
If we have bought a computer that came with Windows 10 installed, the license number is located at the bottom if it is a laptop, a sticker that, unfortunately, is quite easily erased.
But if it’s a desktop you bought with Windows 10, the license number label will be on one of the sides.
If you purchased the computer with Windows 7 or Windows 8, the license number label will also be on the bottom if it’s a laptop or on one side if it’s a desktop.
Because Microsoft made it completely free to upgrade from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows 10, the Windows key used on those PCs was converted to a digital license with the Windows 10 upgrade.
in an email
If you purchased the license from an authorized reseller, you will find the license number on the proof of purchase that was sent to you by email.
In the computer documentation
When you buy a computer to assemble it for parts, if you also bought a Windows 10 license at that time, the license number will be found next to the component boxes, as long as you haven’t thrown them away.
Product key vs digital license
With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft changed the product key name to digital license.
The difference between a product key and a digital license is that the latter is associated with specific hardware and is associated with a Microsoft account.
By being associated with specific hardware, which in turn is associated with an account, every time you reinstall your computer, you will not need to re-enter the license number, since Windows will recognize the hardware of the computer and activate the corresponding license.
However, the product key that was used until Windows 8 could be shared between different devices, without being associated with a specific hardware. This allowed a single license to use Windows with a legitimate and valid license.
How to know the password of Windows 10
If, unfortunately, we do not find the Windows key, neither in the documentation of our team nor in the mailbox, all is not lost.
Fortunately, we can still recover the key of our equipment from the operating system itself.
Windows does not allow us to know in a simple way the license of our copy of Windows. In fact, we will be forced to resort to third-party applications to be able to extract it from our system.
Windows’ register
If you don’t want to install any application to know the Windows 10 key, you can know it through the Windows registry.
The first thing you should be clear about before delving into the registry is that if you modify any value, the equipment may stop working or begin to do so erratically.
By following the steps that I show you below, you do not need to modify anything at all, so if you follow the instructions that I detail, you will know the Windows key without making any changes to the registry.
- First of all, we open the Windows registry by typing the word regedit in the Windows search box and clicking on the only result that is displayed: Windows Registry.
- Next, we go to the following directory.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/SoftwareProtectionPlatform
- Inside the directory Software Protection Platform, we look for the file BackupProductKeyDefault. On the right (in the Data column), the Windows 10 license number will be displayed.
ProduKey
One of the different applications that we have at our disposal to know the license number of our copy of Windows is by using the ProduKey application.
ProduKey is an application that we can download completely free of charge and that we can download through the following link. The application has no mystery, we just have to download and run it.
Next, it will show us the product name, in this case Windows 10 Home, followed by the Windows product type identifier and the license key, as we can see in the image above.
Key Finder
Another interesting application that we have at our disposal to find out the password for the version of Windows that we have installed on our computer is KeyFinder.
Keyfinder is a completely free application that we can download through this link. It works from Windows XP onwards up to Windows 11.
This application allows us to know the registry key from the Windows registry or from the BIOS itself. If your computer is old, you will not find the key in the BIOS, so we must select the Read from Registry option.
The product key only works with a specific version of Windows
One thing we must keep in mind when using our Windows key is that each license is valid only for one type of version of Windows 10.
In other words, if your computer’s license is for Windows 10 Home, you can only use it again to activate a copy of Windows 10 Home. It is not valid to activate Windows 10 Pro or any other version of Windows.
