how to find your Windows 10 Key

Hi, if you did a Win10 upgrade from your old OS using the promotional offer then you do not have a key. You only receive a key if you have purchased a new Win10 Standalone (aka Retail) license

bobkn said:

The free upgrade is just that: an upgrade.

If you can transfer the OS that you upgraded on the first machine to the other computer, and then upgrade the second machine, that'd be OK.

If not, you'll need to buy a license.

That depends on whether the original license was Retail or OEM.

• If the original license was Retail then the user will have full transfer rights to a new device.
• If the original was of an OEM flavor, then the user will be required to purchase a new Win10 license as transfer is not possible

KY COLONEL said:

You say there is no key if you upgraded.... If so, what is the Magical Jellybean key finder showing me?
It says cd key, and gives me five (5) sets of numbers and letters ...It also gives me a product number and some other stuff.

There are a few Win10 generic keys that may be displayed.

Yours is probably showing this:
VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T
or maybe
TX9XD-98N7V-6WMQ6-BX7FG-H8Q99

The license is stored as hardware hash on MS servers. No product key.

The free upgrade gives you a generic key as mentioned. It's of little use. When you do the free upgrade and then activate Windows 10 a hardware ID for that PC is stored on the activation server, along with which version of Windows 10 that PC got with the free upgrade. When you do a clean install on that PC you can just skip entering a key and it will activate against the hardware ID on the activation server. If you do a clean install on hardware with no activation record / stored hardware ID, it will fail activation if you use that generic key. You would then have to enter a valid (non generic) key to activate.

As far as finding the key, try this, https://www.tenforums.com/software-ap...7-showkey.html