Recovering original OEM Windows activation key (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Nicholls]

My newest refurbished Dell laptop came with Win 10 Pro but it was activated in a funny manner. “Windows is activated using your organization’s activation service”

Research on line discovered big companies that buy lots of PCs use this method, but the PCs have to check in to the server every few months or the activation expires. Since I have no way of accessing the previous owner’s corporate server it looked like I was out of luck. More on line research turned up an odd fact. PCs made in the past few years no longer have a sticker on them with the activation key. It’s now buried someplace on the BIOS/UEFI PROM.

There’s a freeware utility that can read and display this for you. http://neosmart.net/OEMkey/ Download the utility there. It successfully read and displayed the as-originally-shipped key for my Dell Latitude 3570. I entered it in Windows activation and it’s now happy: “Windows is activated with a digital license”. Dell makes the situation easier because you can enter the Tag # at their site and get the as-shipped parts breakdown list. I knew it shipped originally with Win 10 Pro.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Yet another reason I’m glad I’m a Mac user.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

This knowledge has made me bolder in purchasing cheap used PCs.

Years ago I bought "new" PCs. Then I bought "refurbished" PCs to save money. Now I'm gambling and buying "used but need work" PCs to save even more money.

I just bought a second Dell Optiplex 3060 tower that needs work. Seller claims tested but it comes with a cleaned-off disk and no OS. At a great discount ($250 shipped). So I ordered it, knowing I know how to retrieve the activation code, and already have a Win 10 ISO on a flash drive.

I wanted a second identical PC so I could upgrade one to Win 11 and take my time at the learning curve. The 3060 has an 8th gen Intel i5-8500 and is about the cheapest PC that can upgrade to Win 11

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

OK so I tested my second 3060, installed a $45 MVMe ssd, installed Win 10 from the ISO drive, and this morning did the upgrade to Win 11.

What a let down. Really not much of a change.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I haven’t seen Win 11 in person yet but reading about it sounds like they just reskinned Win 10 to look more like MacOS.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Not really. The view from the user is the least important part. A major upgrade is hidden away in the guts for security issues.

My concerns were whether Win 11 would support my older MF Canon printer/scanner. I never got a straight answer from any source on this, but it works just fine under Win 11. Same with all of my other peripherals.

 

[Clinton McClure]

It’s always nice when OS updates don’t break things.

 

[David Norman]

Not sure it would help now, but next time you have a PC in this situation you could try the command (Powershell or Command prompt -- not sure if you need run as admin). It may not always work, but it has helped me a couple time with DELL Prebuilts

" wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey "