Question I'm trying to recover the Windows 10 Product Key I used for a VM ?

[PCisverygood]

Hi, I’m sure that this issue is unlikely to be able to be solved, but I was wondering if anyone knows how to recover a product key from a VM and free it up to activate another install.

After I built my latest system I realised that the product key (for windows 10 home) that was located at the back of my old system was never used (otherwise it wouldn’t have let me activate a VM installation). Therefore, I tried to use the product key to test whether Windows 11 Home would activate. But this was when I realised I had forgotten to uninstall/unlink that product key from an old windows 10 VM I had made before I then deleted it. At this point the key is deemed to have already been used, but because I deleted the VM and accidentally forgot to use slmgr to unlink the key, I now can’t use that key for any future W10 VMs.

Is there any way to recover the key or is that one now unusable? If it’s unusable it doesn’t actually matter as my current build is activated through a digital licence anyway.

 

[Lutfij]

After I built my latest system I realised that the product key (for windows 10 home) that was located at the back of my old system was never used (otherwise it wouldn’t have let me activate a VM installation).
If the key you speak of was located at the back of a prebuilt then it's very likely an OEM key, which means it's tied to the BIOS chip for the motherboard = you won't be able to recycle it on another system.

You could upgrade the OS to Windows 11 on your VMWare system so you've got a leg up on that platform.