Windows PCs placed their product key sticker often outside their machine and in their computer’s manuals .Now they are storing it in machine’s UEFI/BIOS and this information is retrieved and applied automatically when reinstalling the operating system.
In addition new element called “Digital Entitlement” was introduced by Windows 10 in their Microsoft’s license that links your Windows key to a ID generated based on your PC’s hardware.
Since your hardware can change to a vast when you upgrade your hardware the entitlement became as a “Digital license” when 2016 Anniversary update came.
Windows 10 license now ties Windows Keys to Microsoft accounts letting us to activate a copy of operating systems by simply logging in with valid online credentials.
If you already login to your Microsoft account or you have a new PC you shouldn’t have to search for your original Windows 10 key.
There may other opportunities where we can still manually find a windows key or prevent this from applied automatically during installation.
Windows 10 settings app show information such as whether you have Digital license or not.But your key is not shown here.
Settings->Update&Security->Activation
You should see “windows is activated with digital license” or “windows is activated with digital license linked to your Microsoft account” if you have digital license.
You can also link your Microsoft account by clicking “add a Microsoft Account” on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information.
We can find our key inside windows by typing into admin’s command prompt as
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
You can also try to find the key outside windows.
I am an ICT undergraduate at Rajarata university of Sri Lanka.