Recover Win 10 key from unbootable

[PTRMAN]

Hi,

I had a win 10 machine that had a fatal error. I couldn't fix it at all, so am looking for a way to find the windows key so I can just reinstall. I have the OS drive in an external dock so can read it; I just can't boot from it.

The original win 10 was a free upgrade from win 7. I've tried KeyFinder, ProduKey and RecoverKeys but nothing is there. Anyone have any suggestions?

*Edit* Just found a thread that states all Win 7 to Win 10 upgrades activated with the same digital product key. As soon as I've copied all the data from the corrupted drive I'll try to reinstall Win 10 with the digital key.

If that fails I guess I'll try calling MS themselves for help...

 

[Dew]

*Edit* Just found a thread that states all Win 7 to Win 10 upgrades activated with the same digital product key. As soon as I've copied all the data from the corrupted drive I'll try to reinstall Win 10 with the digital key.

If that fails I guess I'll try calling MS themselves for help...

Sorta. Your motherboard is permanently activated on Win10 now. All you have to do is install the correct version, you can click skip on the product key and it will automatically activate once it has an internet connection after install.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

Dew is right. No key needed. Create new install media and skip the key during installation.

 

[PTRMAN]

Ugh. It is never easy, is it? Skipping over seemed like several hours of googling GPT/MBR, how to fully remove partitions and "cleaning" drives, and then deleting partitions in the install screen, I've reached the stage where Win 10 is finally installing.
Assuming that works (call me skeptical) then I'm off to the fun part of the night - installing an NVME M.2 drive into my other PC, then trying to figure out how to migrate THAT Win 10 install from SSD to the NVME. Wish me luck!

As always, a big thank you to all who spared a few minutes to help!

 

[BulletDust]

Ugh. It is never easy, is it? Skipping over seemed like several hours of googling GPT/MBR, how to fully remove partitions and "cleaning" drives, and then deleting partitions in the install screen, I've reached the stage where Win 10 is finally installing.
Assuming that works (call me skeptical) then I'm off to the fun part of the night

All of this can be done using Windows recovery media from within the installer itself?!

 

[PTRMAN]

No. The PC on the operating table was dead. Always helpful to have a sevond
working PC on hand for these things.

 

[BulletDust]

No. The PC on the operating table was dead. Always helpful to have a sevond
working PC on hand for these things.

Ok, so you didn't have any recovery media and had to download Windows and create the media on the other PC?

 

[PTRMAN]

First PC failed to boot after working fine. Got a "Critical Process Died" message. Could not get boot into safe mode, and none of the options available (repair, fix, etc.) to me from that PC while trying to boot from worked at all.
I had previously downloaded Win 10 Install to a thumb drive for another PC.
I tried the thumb drive in the dead PC, thinking I could just install Win 10 over the old install in the SSD. No dice.
I then tried the same procedure with a different (also used) SSD. Again no success.
I put both SSDs into an external dock on my other machine, made sure there was nothing on either of them and reformatted them.
Tried each newly-checked and reformatted SSD in the dead PC with the thumb drive installed. Nothing,
Finally dawned on me that the error message was that Win could not be installed on either drive because each drive had an MBR already, and Win 10 could only install to GPT.
Had to google (on the working PC) exactly what this meant and how to completely clean out any partitions remaining.
Ended up using CMD - DISK PART - LiST VOLUME and CLEAN commands for both SSDs.
Retried with original SSD and it finally took.
Really my fault for being a noobie AND for not really reading the error message and trying to understand it. KInd of related but not the same as RTFM.

I got there eventually, but what should have been a 10 minute task took the better part of 3 hours.
Some of us have to learn the hard way.

Hope that explains it.

 

[BulletDust]

First PC failed to boot after working fine. Got a "Critical Process Died" message. Could not get boot into safe mode, and none of the options available (repair, fix, etc.) to me from that PC while trying to boot from worked at all.
I had previously downloaded Win 10 Install to a thumb drive for another PC.
I tried the thumb drive in the dead PC, thinking I could just install Win 10 over the old install in the SSD. No dice.
I then tried the same procedure with a different (also used) SSD. Again no success.
I put both SSDs into an external dock on my other machine, made sure there was nothing on either of them and reformatted them.
Tried each newly-checked and reformatted SSD in the dead PC with the thumb drive installed. Nothing,
Finally dawned on me that the error message was that Win could not be installed on either drive because each drive had an MBR already, and Win 10 could only install to GPT.
Had to google (on the working PC) exactly what this meant and how to completely clean out any partitions remaining.
Ended up using CMD - DISK PART - LiST VOLUME and CLEAN commands for both SSDs.
Retried with original SSD and it finally took.
Really my fault for being a noobie AND for not really reading the error message and trying to understand it. KInd of related but not the same as RTFM.

I got there eventually, but what should have been a 10 minute task took the better part of 3 hours.
Some of us have to learn the hard way.

Hope that explains it.

It sort of explains it, but the simple way out of your dilemma would have been to boot off the USB recovery media, delete all partitions and reformat the SSD(s), then follow through with installing Windows?

 

[ManofGod]

First PC failed to boot after working fine. Got a "Critical Process Died" message. Could not get boot into safe mode, and none of the options available (repair, fix, etc.) to me from that PC while trying to boot from worked at all.
I had previously downloaded Win 10 Install to a thumb drive for another PC.
I tried the thumb drive in the dead PC, thinking I could just install Win 10 over the old install in the SSD. No dice.
I then tried the same procedure with a different (also used) SSD. Again no success.
I put both SSDs into an external dock on my other machine, made sure there was nothing on either of them and reformatted them.
Tried each newly-checked and reformatted SSD in the dead PC with the thumb drive installed. Nothing,
Finally dawned on me that the error message was that Win could not be installed on either drive because each drive had an MBR already, and Win 10 could only install to GPT.
Had to google (on the working PC) exactly what this meant and how to completely clean out any partitions remaining.
Ended up using CMD - DISK PART - LiST VOLUME and CLEAN commands for both SSDs.
Retried with original SSD and it finally took.
Really my fault for being a noobie AND for not really reading the error message and trying to understand it. KInd of related but not the same as RTFM.

I got there eventually, but what should have been a 10 minute task took the better part of 3 hours.
Some of us have to learn the hard way.

Hope that explains it.

Glad you have it working. However, Windows 10 can be installed on an MBR or GPT partitioned drive, does not matter either way. The primary difference it, a GPT partitioned drive supports partitions bigger than 2TB and it is used for UEFI boot mode. MBR is used in legacy boot mode.

 

[PTRMAN]

It sort of explains it, but the simple way out of your dilemma would have been to boot off the USB recovery media, delete all partitions and reformat the SSD(s), then follow through with installing Windows?

But I only had a Win 10 Install package, not a recovery disk. Can I boot directly off a USB with only a Win 10 Install package? I would really like to know, because now another PC I have is throwing a "disk read error occurred" message on start up, and if I can boot of the same USB with WIn 10 Install then I'll try that fix.

Glad you have it working. However, Windows 10 can be installed on an MBR or GPT partitioned drive, does not matter either way. The primary difference it, a GPT partitioned drive supports partitions bigger than 2TB and it is used for UEFI boot mode. MBR is used in legacy boot mode.

The Win 10 installer insisted that I could not install to the drive because it had an MBR on it. I had to remove the drive and go through the process of deleting the partitions. Plug SSD back into first PC and only then was I allowed to install to that disk.

 

[BulletDust]

But I only had a Win 10 Install package, not a recovery disk. Can I boot directly off a USB with only a Win 10 Install package? I would really like to know, because now another PC I have is throwing a "disk read error occurred" message on start up, and if I can boot of the same USB with WIn 10 Install then I'll try that fix.

My word you can! You may have to change boot settings in either the boot menu or UEFI/bios to boot from the media instead of the hard drive though.

 

[PTRMAN]

My word you can! You may have to change boot settings in either the boot menu or UEFI/bios to boot from the media instead of the hard drive though.

Tried that w/disk read error pc. Started boot but then nothing happened. Will have to spend more time but probably not until tomorrow.

 

[BulletDust]

Tried that w/disk read error pc. Started boot but then nothing happened. Will have to spend more time but probably not until tomorrow.

Make sure you're using the black USB 2.0 ports. The other thing is: Make sure you're making your bootable media using the Windows media creation tool. I know you were somewhat against doing so earlier on, but it really is the simplest and most reliable way to ensure that the boot media you're making is 100% bootable and made correctly in order to rule out faulty media as the cause of the issue.