Windows 10: Reading windows 10 key from bios

I work for a company that we get vendor pc's all the time. We need to be able to get the key from the bios and from the registry. With this we can then see if there is a key in the bios and if it is being used in the OS...
example will be vendors sending in Windows 7 pc's but win10 key is in bios... we know we can attempt to upgrade.

thanks for any help...

I have a teste machine that RW and oem_key.exe work and show my key in the bios. This key is different than what is in the OS.

from googling and trying various things... it seems that I thought I had it but it doesnt work.
here is the code I am using and top part is for bios key and bottom lengthy part is from the registry...

:)

 

Windows 10 product key for a clean install

Similar problem. I have a Sony Vaio Multiflip with preinstalled Windows 8.1SL and did a clean install of Windows 10. I got the product key read from BIOS but appears to be useless since Windows 10 could not recognize either BIOS product key or the key I
typed in (read from BIOS previously).

I erased recovery partition on the laptop to save space too.

If MS could enable upgrade/clean install ISO that can read product key right from BIOS then it would be wonderful.

 

Activation says it won't work for this version

If was Windows 8 then the key should be stored in the BIOS and when you install Windows 10 it should read the key from the BIOS and you don't need to input a key. When install is complete it should auto activate.

 

@Superfly ^^^^

 

-- OR --

View Product Key in Windows 10

 

Im looking for a way to script it. Ill give you more info...
We us Altiris and I am going to setup a custom inventory that will automatically grab this info...

So a tool that I need to run manually wont work. Also that one needs .Net which I do not have and wouldnt run. You can see in my pic I have 2 tools that you manually run for the info.

 

It is much more complicated to do than using a simple script.

Showkeyplus tells you version, if it is an oem-slp key, COA key, system builder key, retail key, volume licence key etc.

For example, if a user has windows 7 preinstalled by a major vendor, then extracting a key will give an oem-slp generic key which is of no use. You need to COA key which is normally on a blue sticker. if that key has not been used, no keyfinder can determine it.

Similarly, with Windows 10, if you have upgraded from 7/8 for example, the key is again just a useless generic key as licence is mobo bound.

Then you get complications of upgrades from XP, Vista etc which give you upgrade keys which cannot be used to reinstall OS without going back to base OS.

Superfly has spent years refining showkeyplus, and has a lot of knowledge that is probably not common knowledge without a lot of web searching. It will certainly be more than 100 lines of VBS script by at least one order of magnitude.

 

Yup I touched on it here: Showkey - Page 46 - Windows 10 Forums

...OA3xOriginalProductKey was introduced with Win 8.1, it is not in Win 7's WMI. (BTW that script looks a lot like the ShowKey1.1 script with a few name changes... LOL)

ShowKeyPlus uses native API's as I said in the link above as well as minimum .Net 4.0 client redist. which Win 7 downloads as part of recommend updates. I'm not aware of any script/commandline app that will work on Win 7, thus I added that functionality which will allow it to be run in a script (with .Net ofc).

PS: I could try targeting .Net 3.5, I suppose, and see if there any compilation errors...

 

ya know that was funny... i took the vbscript for the registry and then edited that. Started adding in the other part and when I got done (help with a coworker) .. we both looked at it.. then we found that Showkey1.1 script and was like.... woah... we read his mind!!!!!! HAHAHAHAA

so do you think you could add a feature to run this as a command line with output log options?