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How To Find Out Your Windows 8 Product Key - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

[ This article is originally posted at www.elmajdal.net : http://elmajdal.net/Win8/How_To_Find_Out_Your_Windows_8_Product_Key.aspx ]

You bought a new laptop that came preinstalled with Windows 8. You may already have noticed that Windows 8 laptops and desktops come with a Microsoft Label that does not include anymore the Product Key.

yle="float:left;" />Unlike previous versions of Windows, such as Windows XP, Vista and 7, the product key was always on the Label and we always referred to this label when we needed to format the machine. In this article, I will be showing you a small useful utility that you can use to retrieve Windows and other software's Product keys.

In a previous article, How To Install a Fresh Copy of Windows 8 , we installed a new Windows 8 copy into our machine. As you have seen and already know, Windows 8 now requires you to type the product key during the installation process. If you don't have a product key, you will not be able to continue the installation.

To identify the product key of the currently installed Windows operating system, download ProductKey, a free utility that does not require any installation, you can simply run it and it will automatically list the product key of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office , and other programs.

There are two versions of this utility, a 64-bit and a 32-bit . So all what you have to do first is to identify if you have a 32-bit operating system, or a 64-bit operating system.

To identify your system type, right click on Computer and click Properties

Inside the System Properties page, the system type will be listed. As shown below, I have a 64-bit operating system.

Now download the appropriate ProductKey build that suites your PC ( 32-bit or 64-bit )

Download ProduKey for x86 ( 32bit )

Download ProduKey for x64
Extract the downloaded file, and run ProductKey.exe application
The installed Windows operating system, Microsoft Office and many other installed applications will be listed and their corresponding product key as well.

Write down the information you need or even save the information in a text file. Right click the software name, and then click Save Selected Items

Give the text file a name, choose a directory and save it.

The below snapshot shows how the output file looks like. Of course I removed my own product key :)

Now the next time you want to format your computer, you don't have to worry about what is your Windows 8 product key.