Will a Factory Reset remove Activation key?

[grocerybag]

I'm planning on doing a factory reset on my laptop, But im scared if my Activation Key or Product key or whatever it is will dissapear as well.
So does it remove the Key as well?

[Raoul]

It won't affect it if you use the laptop recovery reset that most have. There are ways to find your current product key to back it up just in case using command prompt, registry and should be some tools that can do it for you just do a quick search with your windows version.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The activation is forever tied to that laptop motherboard; you are free to wipe the OS all you want; it gets the license back all by itself through Microsoft's services regardless.

[andy.collins82]

Nowadays Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account.

I've recently upgraded my MOBO from a 300 series to a 600 series with a clean OS install i didn't need to enter the activation key, all i had to do was login with my Microsoft account. So doing a reset wont cause any problems

[plat]

Think of the world-wide chaos if everyone's Windows became de-activated upon reset. That's like billions in theory. The key can be stored in UEFI or registry, depending on model of board.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by plat:

Think of the world-wide chaos if everyone's Windows became de-activated upon reset. That's like billions in theory. The key can be stored in UEFI or registry, depending on model of board.

The windows activation key isn't ever stored in UEFI. For OEM systems they "tattoo" the board via DMI with a unique identifier (UUID) which is associated with the OEM key, but the key isn't stored in UEFI/BIOS nor is it stored on the board anywhere.

[plat]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

The windows activation key isn't ever stored in UEFI. For OEM systems they "tattoo" the board via DMI with a unique identifier (UUID) which is associated with the OEM key, but the key isn't stored in UEFI/BIOS nor is it stored on the board anywhere.

https://superuser.com/questions/1095980/is-the-windows-10-product-key-in-bios

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by plat:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

The windows activation key isn't ever stored in UEFI. For OEM systems they "tattoo" the board via DMI with a unique identifier (UUID) which is associated with the OEM key, but the key isn't stored in UEFI/BIOS nor is it stored on the board anywhere.

https://superuser.com/questions/1095980/is-the-windows-10-product-key-in-bios

It isn't, on Windows 10/11 hardware ID activation is used for the "digital entitlement". The license is stored on Microsofts activation servers and when you connect to the internet it will automatically re-activate the OEM key. If you do that wmic query on an OEM computer that shipped with Windows 10 it will return nothing.

Hmm looked into this some more and it seems that some OEMs still embed it in NVRAM, at least for 10.

[plat]

Right. My windows 10 key used to return the product key via wmic command when I had a z170 board. Now it's retrievable via the registry. Not everyone has an up-to-the-,minute board.

Microsoft is migrating things to its cloud. That has its pros and cons obviously.

[grocerybag]

So, once i factory reset, all i need to do is just log in to my Microsoft account and the key would still be there? (Im still learning on these kinds of stuffs related to techs)

[Raoul]

Originally posted by grocerybag:

So, once i factory reset, all i need to do is just log in to my Microsoft account and the key would still be there? (Im still learning on these kinds of stuffs related to techs)

If you already activated as a digital license by logging into your ms account then yes exactly you can just log back in after reset.

[grocerybag]

Originally posted by Raoul:

Originally posted by grocerybag:

So, once i factory reset, all i need to do is just log in to my Microsoft account and the key would still be there? (Im still learning on these kinds of stuffs related to techs)

If you already activated as a digital license by logging into your ms account then yes exactly you can just log back in after reset.

Yes the key is activated as a digital license in my ms account, thank you so much for your help along with everyone

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Not to mention that if the OS is fully on your system and you are doing a factory restore; it's not wiping your drive, it's simply wiping all the users and resetting all of the OS settings.

OEM Pre-Builds and Laptops are free to wipe the OS drive out without worrying about a key of any kind. That's been taken care of before you purchased the device. Your product key (i.e. Digital License) will be re-activated automatically once connected online (you don't need your product key written down for OEM systems) if you reinstall that same OS edition again at a later time. That includes doing full drive wipes and replacements.