How to get Win 10 license key from a dead laptop

MSWINUSER said:

Yesterday morning when I started my laptop (Dell 7140) , it went into BSOD and will not restart after 100% data collection. I had to hold the power key for 10.15 sec to power it off. I powered it on again and it went to BSOD a few seconds after the display of the DELL logo. The BSOD says PNP_DETECTED_FATAL_ERROR.

If I remember correctly , I saw "update and shut down" at my last shut down. But I cannot be sure if I had a good start up between the last shut down and the BSOD yesterday morning.

Here was the sequence of diagnostic work I did

1.After two times of Power up, BSOD, manual power down , the 3rd power up will allow me to go into recovery. I went to trouble shoot/advance option/ select 'uninstall updates'. The latest quality update was uninstall successfully. But uninstall of the latest feature update was not successful.

2. Start the 7140 and got BSOD again.

3. All Dell hardware diagnostic ran OK.

4. Restart 7140, still BSOD.

5.I used the WIN 10 install USB key (downloaded from Microsoft) to perform "Startup repair" , got "Startup repair could not repair your PC"

6. I tried to do "System restore". But I did not have a system image to restore from.

7.Tried start up in safe mode, But BSOD before anything happened.

This laptop (Dell 7140) came with WIN8 pro pre-installed and was upgraded to WIN 10 a year ago. I am stuck now. I don't mind losing data and install from scratch. But I do not have the license key. On my other WIN7 laptops, the license key sticker was on the bottom. But I found nothing on my 7140. I used the WIN10 USB before. It does not ask for license key for system repair. But it will ask when install from scratch.

Can some one suggest on how I can get my license key from my WIN 10 system which cannot come up.

Welcome to the forum MSWINUSER.
If you upgraded to Win10 via the free upgrade program then your license is an OEM and is not transferable to another PC.

Hello @MSWINUSER,
Welcome to TenForums.

Sometimes you can find the License / Product Key in the battery compartment.

I hope this helps.

If the problem is your disk or O/S, you are free to either
- if the disk is ok: clean install Win 10 (no key needed)
- if the disk has failed, you can replace it. Again, you can clean install Win 10 (no key needed)

If your laptop hardware other than your disk has failed, that's another story.

Of course no clean install is needed if you have been using disk imaging regularly and routinely as is so very often recommended here, you can restore a disk image to the existing disk or the new disk as appropriate and have your PC running as it was when you created that disk image. (E.g. Macrium Reflect - free or paid for).

Why is no key needed? Because your activation details are held on MS's activation servers against a hash of a form of your hardware id (that does not include RAM or disk - so you can change those freely).

Even if you had a retail license and wished to transfer it to a new PC, if the activation was linked to a MS live id account used to log in, again, no key would be needed.

Paul Black said:

Hello @MSWINUSER,
Welcome to TenForums.

Sometimes you can find the License / Product Key in the battery compartment.

I hope this helps.

Not anymore, well not since Windows 8 anyway. Factory OEM keys are now embedded in the BIOS. That's where the key is for Windows 8 on my ASUS laptop. Official install media should read it and use it automatically. All I got was a Windows 8 sticker with no product code on it. Its a unique key also, not a generic OEM key.
And once I upgraded to Windows 10 it got a Digital License for Windows 10. I can now install and activate with the Generic Windows 10 key. Just a FYI post.

MSWINUSER said:

This laptop (Dell 7140) came with WIN8 pro pre-installed and was upgraded to WIN 10 a year ago. I am stuck now. I don't mind losing data and install from scratch. But I do not have the license key. On my other WIN7 laptops, the license key sticker was on the bottom. But I found nothing on my 7140...

No, you won't have the key on a sticker. As it was supplied with Win8 pre-installed by the OEM, then it has its Win8 key embedded in the firmware. When you boot from a Win10 install usb it will read this key from the firmware, use it to choose the correct edition to install (Home or Pro) and to activate it.

At no point will you be asked for a key, or even which edition to install. Setup handles it all based on the key it finds in the bios.

Bree said:

No, you won't have the key on a sticker. As it was supplied with Win8 pre-installed by the OEM, then it has its Win8 key embedded in the firmware. When you boot from a Win10 install usb it will read this key from the firmware, use it to choose the correct edition to install (Home or Pro) and to activate it.

At no point will you be asked for a key, or even which edition to install. Setup handles it all based on the key it finds in the bios.

Hopefully, that is how it was at first for my ASUS Windows 8 laptop. For what ever reason, at some point (build) my Windows 10 install media stopped reading it? I'm actually fine with that, it lets me clean install Pro or Pro Workstation etc without having to upgrade from Home to get there.