how to find your Windows 10 Key

Superfly said:

I think it's the keyless activation probe onto OEM's - where they activate the hardware ID prior to it leaving the factory (i.e instead of just injecting the key)...it's speculation though, don't have a Win10 OEM PC to check firmware...

I don't know anybody with a new Windows 10 device to check it out for you. I'm retired, and its just family and friends in my group. They don't buy new until old goes up in smoke. Makes more sense to me to embed the key. Activating each and every unit manually sounds time consuming. Unless that's the new way to do it. It would be interesting to know if you did a Retail install, if you could skip entering a key the second clean install on that PC. All my PC's did the free upgrade.

No bother, it's OK

The time taken to poll MS servers for a key is probably the same as using a generic and activating... not much fuss.
Kinda makes sense...

Superfly said:

No bother, it's OK

The time taken to poll MS servers for a key is probably the same as using a generic and activating... not much fuss.
Kinda makes sense...

Yeah, I don't know. I'm no expert on this stuff. In the past, the OEM would do their custom image then clone it to every identical model x PC. To me if you have to register every single PC ID before you ship it, that's a lot of work and time spent. If it happens when the owner does the OOBE that's different. I don't see how they can do that though? My money's on an embedded key just like Windows 8/8.1.