How to use Windows Terminal to recover your Windows Product Key

• From the Windows desktop, right click on the Windows button, and from the quick menu choose Windows Terminal

Note: The names PowerShell and Windows Terminal now seem to be used interchangeably, but basically refer to the same thing. It’s also worth noting, that you should not need to open a Windows Terminal with administrators privileges in order to run this command.

• When the Terminal window opens type the following:

(Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from SoftwareLicensingService').OA3xOriginalProductKey

• When you press Enter on your Keyboard, the Product Key for your computer will be displayed. 

Note: There are two types of Activation method, a Product Key and a Digital license. If your computer is using a digital license the command above will not display a key. This is because the license key has been digitally registered to the hardware you are using. So if you need to do a clean install of Windows and you have a Digital license, when reinstalling Windows select the option “I am Reinstalling Windows on this PC‘ and your computer will use the license its already been issued by Microsoft.

• To gracefully close the Terminal Window type:

exit

• When you press Enter on your keyboard the Terminal window will close.

• Microsoft article – What is PowerShell
• Microsoft article – Find your Windows product key
• Amazon store – Purchase Windows product key
• Wikipedia article – Powershell