


Search and open Regedit via the Search function in Windows 7 or 8.However, please note that both methods will require administrator rights to your Windows machine. We offer two approaches for you to recover your Windows product key: searching through the Registry Editor or with a third party program. In many cases though, keys can be recovered in Windows-no need to rummage through purchase e-mails or disk cases. Unfortunately, that ever-so-important key can sometimes be misplaced or lost. After all, you don’t want to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows only to find out that you don’t know what your Windows product key is. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.Common sense and software companies advise users to save their product keys securely in case they need them in the future, such as when re-installing your operating system. In a future post, I’m going to show you how you can reactivate Windows using a digital license that is stored in your Microsoft account. Once you have linked your account, you should now see that the message says Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account. In these cases, it’s really important you don’t lose that product key because you can only activate Windows using that key. If your product key doesn’t support a digital license, then you’ll just see two other lines, Product ID and Product Key listed, but with no option to add a Microsoft account.

Click on Add an account and you’ll be asked to sign in. If the product key/license can be stored in your Microsoft account, you’ll see the Add a Microsoft account option at the very bottom. Once you have an account, log into Windows normally (with your Microsoft account or your local account) and go to Start and then Settings.įinally, click on Activation in the left-hand menu.Īt the top, you’ll get some info about which edition of Windows you have installed and whether or not it is activated. Obviously, you’ll need to have a Microsoft account already setup in order to use this feature. Link Windows License to Microsoft Account
