Find Activation Key After Hardware Upgrades

I build my own PCs and I have 4 Windows 10 licenses from upgrading 4 purchased Windows 8.1 licenses.

I have one PC that failed to acquire its License last year when I updated its hardware. I just ignored the messages since I only used it occasionally. Now I have replaced the motherboard, hard drive , video board and memory on it. I would like to properly activate it if possible.

Unfortunately, I am not sure which 8.1 license goes with which PC and I never recorded the Windows 10 license that was digitally assigned. The hard drive that was on the system when it was last activated is dead and buried.

It doesn't appear that I can see the licenses online in my Microsoft account.

Is there a way to figure this out by interrogating the PCs that are properly activated? I have an app that seems to be able to show the current Windows 10 licenses on those systems, but I have no way to associate those back to the original 8.1 licenses.

1. Press Windows key + X
2. Click Command Prompt (Admin)
3. At the command prompt, type:wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKeyThis will reveal the product key.
   

Samuria said:

1. Press Windows key + X
2. Click Command Prompt (Admin)
3. At the command prompt, type:wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKeyThis will reveal the product key.
   

Nothing was returned for some reason.

As it's a new hardware, there is no way to retrieve a license as it never had any OS installed.
Was the Win 8.1 license installed on the old hardware a OEM or retail?

Do you still have the Win 8.1 license key that was shipped with it?

Megahertz said:

As it's a new hardware, there is no way to retrieve a license as it never had any OS installed.
Was the Win 8.1 license installed on the old hardware a OEM or retail?

Do you still have the Win 8.1 license key that was shipped with it?

The original 8.1 Pro licenses were all purchased, not OEM installed. I have all of the original cards with the License Keys, but I don't know which one needs to be used on this particular machine. What the steps in the earlier messages were trying to do was to find out which particular 8.1 license keys were used on my other Activated systems.

Did you try the CMD:
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
on the other computers?
Run on them and take note. The key that is not on one of them is the one you should try on the new computer.

Poorman65 said:

The original 8.1 Pro licenses were all purchased, not OEM installed. I have all of the original cards with the License Keys, but I don't know which one needs to be used on this particular machine. What the steps in the earlier messages were trying to do was to find out which particular 8.1 license keys were used on my other Activated systems.

It really doesn't matter. What happens when you try to activate Windows 10 with any/all of the Windows 8.1 product keys?

Megahertz said:

Did you try the CMD:
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
on the other computers?
Run on them and take note. The key that is not on one of them is the one you should try on the new computer.

That is what I had done. None of them returned a value.

Still curious if you tried activating Windows 10 with one of the Windows 8.1 product keys. It really does not matter which one.

NavyLCDR said:

Still curious if you tried activating Windows 10 with one of the Windows 8.1 product keys. It really does not matter which one.

I just took a guess at which one it was and tried it, and it activated. So, I guess I just need to see if the activation on any of the others gets dropped.