Windows 10: Need help getting the Win 10 Product Key Correct

Needed to do a reinstall of Win 10 due to death of Father-in-Law. Resetting machine for one of his granddaughters to use. Started reinstall with "don't save anything" approach. Went off to do other outdoors tasks. Came back 1.5 hours later to machine having shut down. Don't know why. No indication of a power outage. Restart of machine went to 7% complete and stayed there forever. Struggled with it for 1+ hours. Decided to create install media on another machine and built a USB 32Gb according to instructions using my Win 10 machine. Rebuilt the "coma" machine using the image. That went fine

:)

 

Why was I not asked for a product key when upgrading to Win 10?

According to your spec you have Win 10 Pro, but perhaps that doesn't reflect your PC.

You haven't stated which edition of Win 10 you have on this machine, nor what your Win 10 key is for.

For example, if you already have Win 10 Pro and your key is Win 10 Home, that would be a retrograde step.

For interest only:
Change Product Key in Windows 10

More on product key if you search this list or look at 'Related Tutorials' in the above.
Windows 10 Tutorial Index

 

Win 10 Product Key via Elevated CMD

Suggest you take a look at Superfly's app. It's kinda been the de facto "get Key" app for some time.

*ArrowShowKeyPlus - Windows 10 Forums

 

How to get product key of old OS (Win 7) after upgrading to Win 10?


OK guys, this will take time, encoding in process but after that I need to do some basic editing and add explaining titles before I can post the video:




The process as I did it:

• Install Windows 8.1 Pro on a new machine, activate with a valid product key which had never been used before. A totally virgin key. Activation OK
• Reinstall 8.1 Pro on same machine wiping the HDD, use the same key to activate. Activation OK
• Reinstall 8.1 Pro on a new machine, use the same key to activate. Activation OK
• Upgrade the last install to Windows 10. Windows 10 activation OK
• Reinstall 8.1 Pro on a new machine trying to use the same retail product key, resulting this: