windows 10 activation key and motherboards?

[solarwinggx]

I reformatted my harddrive and reinstalled windows 10 on it. Unfortunately i forgot to write down my windows 10 activation key.

 

I know that windows 10 licenses are linked to mother boards these days, is there a way to get the key back?

[Cyanara]

It's completely automatic, you don't have to do anything. It recognises your computer when you reconnect to the Internet and activates it. Just skip the part of the installation where it asks for your key.

[solarwinggx]

8 minutes ago, Cyanara said:

It's completely automatic, you don't have to do anything. It recognises your computer when you reconnect to the Internet and activates it. Just skip the part of the installation where it asks for your key.

why is this showing up then? I did all the windows updates

[NMS]

4 minutes ago, solarwinggx said:

why is this showing up then? I did all the windows updates

Most likely because you did not have a license.

If you had a genuine license, the Windows would've been activated on its own without even notifying you, unless you made major hardware changes including motherboard, then it would ask you to link your microsoft account after which it would be activated again.

[solarwinggx]

1 minute ago, NMS said:

Most likely because you did not have a license.

If you had a genuine license, the Windows would've been activated on its own without even notifying you, unless you made major hardware changes including motherboard, then it would ask you to link your microsoft account after which it would be activated again.

Thats not possible, i had a genuine license that came with the laptop. It ported over when during the free windows 10 from windows 8 fiasco and i had no issues with it asking me to activate windows for the 5 year duration that i had the laptop!

[NMS]

4 minutes ago, solarwinggx said:

Thats not possible, i had a genuine license that came with the laptop. It ported over when during the free windows 10 from windows 8 fiasco and i had no issues with it asking me to activate windows for the 5 year duration that i had the laptop!

If that's the case, and knowing how things are done on laptops, I'm gonna guess that key was connected to the microsoft account. I assume here that it had one since 90% of laptops come preinstalled with bloatware/malware and already own accounts so if you disconnected that... you lost it (unless you remember the email and password).

But all of that is assuming that was the case.

 

OR

 

It had no account and you simply did not create your own Microsoft account to bind the license to.

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, NMS said:

If that's the case, and knowing how things are done on laptops, I'm gonna guess that key was connected to the microsoft account. I assume here that it had one since 90% of laptops come preinstalled with bloatware/malware and already own accounts so if you disconnected that... you lost it (unless you remember the email and password).

But all of that is assuming that was the case.

 

OR

 

It had no account and you simply did not create your own Microsoft account to bind the license to.

What he said. You can try signing into your Microsoft account (if you had one) but if you didn't have one or if it doesn't work, I'm afraid you won't be able to activate it (I'm assuming there isn't a product key on a sticker underneath the laptop). You'll have to either use it unlicensed, buy a new key, or... I don't think I'm allowed to go there on this site so I won't lol.

[solarwinggx]

I figured it out

 

I installed the wrong version of windows, my laptop came with Windows 10 home edition, and i installed windows 10 Pro edition by accident.

I just reinstalled windows and it activated with no issues

 

Thanks for all the help!