Windows 10 Product Key: Finding Yours from the Command Line

Finding Your Windows 10 Product Key

If your copy of Windows 10 came pre-installed by the manufacturer (OEM), your product key is embedded in the firmware rather than printed on a sticker, and you can pull it directly from Windows itself without needing any third-party tools. Right-click the Start button and choose Command Prompt (or Windows Terminal/PowerShell), then run:

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

This returns the OEM product key embedded in your device’s firmware at the point it was manufactured, which is the key tied to that specific machine. If it returns blank, your device may have been activated via a digital licence tied to your Microsoft account rather than an embedded firmware key, in which case there’s no separate product key to retrieve — the licence is checked automatically against Microsoft’s activation servers instead, and you can confirm it’s active under Settings > Update & Security > Activation. wmic is deprecated in current builds of Windows 11 (though usually still present on Windows 10), so if it’s missing, the equivalent PowerShell command is:

(Get-CimInstance -ClassName SoftwareLicensingService).OA3xOriginalProductKey

wmic Is Being Removed — Use PowerShell Instead (Updated for 2026)

The wmic command above still works on Windows 10, but treat it as legacy: Microsoft has been phasing it out of Windows 11 for several years, and as of Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 it’s already removed by default on new installs and upgrades — only installable afterward as an optional Feature on Demand. Microsoft has also announced that WMIC will be removed entirely (with no FoD available) in the next Windows 11 feature update after 25H2. In practice, this means the PowerShell command further down should now be treated as the primary method rather than a fallback, especially on any Windows 11 machine:

(Get-CimInstance -ClassName SoftwareLicensingService).OA3xOriginalProductKey

Get-CimInstance is Microsoft’s current recommended replacement for wmic generally (not just for this command) — avoid Get-WmiObject as well, since that cmdlet is itself deprecated and isn’t available in PowerShell 7+.

Resources

• product key
• guide