Restoring Windows 10 with Hardware Change

[meer23]

Hello, my hard drive was just recently corrupted and completely broke. I had to install a new one and lost all of my data on my old drive. After booting up Windows 10 on the new drive, I find that I need the product key to fully activate my copy of Windows. Unfortunately, I misplaced the key and do not know where it is. I already bought the retail USB license of Windows 10 a while back and used the key to activate it on my old drive, so shouldn't there be a way to sync my windows account to my new drive and fully activate my OS? Without activating Windows I cannot do any customization and there are many minor annoyances, any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

 

[D JAY Cva]

contact Microsoft with proof of purchase

 

[captaincharisma]

if you bought it retail then you may need to contact MS to activate it but if you log into windows with a MS account it would already be linked up to it. if you just did the reinstall it can take 24-48 hours for your computer (assuming it is connected to the internet) to contact the activation servers. the steps in this article may be able to provide some help.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-re-activate-windows-10-after-hardware-change

 

[USAFRet]

Hello, my hard drive was just recently corrupted and completely broke. I had to install a new one and lost all of my data on my old drive. After booting up Windows 10 on the new drive, I find that I need the product key to fully activate my copy of Windows. Unfortunately, I misplaced the key and do not know where it is. I already bought the retail USB license of Windows 10 a while back and used the key to activate it on my old drive, so shouldn't there be a way to sync my windows account to my new drive and fully activate my OS? Without activating Windows I cannot do any customization and there are many minor annoyances, any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

You needed to sync things before parts died.
Don't you have a record of the license key somewhere?

 

[10tacle]

With Windows 10, you need to create an account with Microsoft to carry your licenses over to other hardware configurations which is a painless operation compared to past Windows version hardware changes. If you have not created one, you need to. Then find that key. You might be able to find a copy of it on your receipt from where you purchased it from. Not sure about USB versions, but I know that's the way download versions work. That, or it's an invalid copy and we can't help.

 

[tubagznyven]

if u buy retail,and already pair it with your microsoft acc,all u need is when u install the win 10 just skip the session that ask serial number,click i dont have serial number,and after u finish just log in to your microsoft acc and it will be activated

 

[meer23]

After reading all of your answers and doing a bit more research, I've found that I needed to manually sync my license to my real microsoft account on my old drive, however I never did this. My old harddrive is corrupted and inaccessible, so am I just completely screwed and need to spend $100 on a new license? If somebody can tell me an alternate way I would be very grateful, as right now this is very frustrating.

 

[USAFRet]

After reading all of your answers and doing a bit more research, I've found that I needed to manually sync my license to my real microsoft account on my old drive, however I never did this. My old harddrive is corrupted and inaccessible, so am I just completely screwed and need to spend $100 on a new license? If somebody can tell me an alternate way I would be very grateful, as right now this is very frustrating.

Call MS and either go through the phone robot, or speak to a human.
They are generally very good about actual broken hardware changes.