Windows 10: activation problem no product key

i had a windows 7 laptop wasn't working properly went to support and they to;d me to do a clean boot and my hard drive crashed says has no OS so a friend found and old dell optiplex sff and gave me a wd 690gb hard drive with windows 10 the hard drive hasn't been used since 2016 he was told it was done but when i hooked it up it miraculously booted up so i got windows 10 now it says its not activated and id like to do so but i dont want to spend 200$ on a licence/ product keyis there a way to actived with out product key or find existing key windows is up to date now but would like to activate it any suggestions. Thx P.s im still pretty pev'd at microsoft support for killing my windows 7 laptop!!!

:)

 

Activate windows 10 after re-installing (I have lost my product key)

I own a Lenovo T430 laptop. In 2017, I installed Windows 10 using my original Windows 7 product key. Unfortunately, I cannot find that product key anymore. I need to re-install windows 10. Will it be automatically activated after the installation, if I skip the step of asking the product key during the installation?

In my opinion, I believe that my laptop will have a digital entitlement stored on the Microsoft Activation Servers and this will not be a problem. Is that true?

If not, please suggest me a solution or a workaround.

 

Product key

Hi Megan,

A product key is used when activating a software.
To help us determine the appropriate troubleshooting steps that can resolve your concern, we'd like to ask the following questions:

• What product are you trying to activate?
• Are you looking for the product key to activate your Office application?
• Which version of Office are you trying to activate? To check this, you can perform the steps posted on this
  link.
• Are you looking for the product key to activate your Windows?

We look forward to your response.

 

Windows 10 upgrade activation product key requirement no skip

Hi Anil,

To quote Andre's post, can you please try the following steps as well right after you got the product key from the steps that was provided to you above.

• Click Start
• Settings
• Find Update & Security
• On the left pane of the page, click Activation
• In the change the product key section, enter the product key you have
• Click Next to activate.

Let us know how it goes so we can provide you with a better solution.