Sometimes you need your Windows 8 Product Key, In Versions prior to Windows 8 this was fairly easy you could just look at the Product key sticker on your Computer. But since Windows 8 Microsoft made a change. Most likely you won’t have a product sticker anymore. Instead they save the Product key in your BIOS/UEFI. This is a pretty nice feature, since now when you reinstall windows 8 it will automatically retrieve your Product Key from the BIOS/UEFI. But Retrieving the Product key on your own got a bit more complicated. But luckily we can still extract it. If you are not able to boot up windows, look at the last part of Method 1 this will describe a method which does not require a installed version of windows.

Method 1:

Download RW-EVERYTHING. The download can be found here: http://rweverything.com/download/ the easiest way is to choose the RWPortable version. Make sure you choose the right one for your version of Windows. When downloaded extract the ZIP file. And execute “RW.exe”

Click on the ACPI Table button at the top. After that click on the MSDM tab. Your BIOS’s product key is at the bottom.

If you are for some reason unable to boot up windows, we can try another way. This involves HirensBootCD which can be downloaded here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ this will download an .ISO which you will need to burn onto a CD or alternatively make a bootable USB. I am going to assume you already know how to Burn an image to a CD.  If not you can have a look here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/burn-a-cd-or-dvd-from-an-iso-file

Now boot off the CD/USB and select Mini Windows XP, this will boot a minimal version of Windows XP right of your CD. After this you can insert a USB with the RWportable 32 bit version on it. And Extract the product key the same way as explained above. If you don’t know how to boot from a CD/USB have a look here: http://lifehacker.com/5991848/how-to-boot-from-a-cd-or-usb-drive-on-any-pc

Method 2:

The second option is probably a bit easier. The guys at Mydigitallife.info made a nice little tool that can extract the product code. You can find the tool here:

NOTE: Unlinked due to Adware, proceed at your own risk

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/30363-Windows-8-Product-Key-Viewer?p=510104&viewfull=1#post510104

When downloaded extract the .rar file. And open it up to extract the product code stored in the BIOS/UEFI select the MSDM KEY option.

Method 3:

Christian Korneck made a script that can be run from within windows, this will also extract the Product code from within the Firmware. You can get the necessary files on Github:

https://github.com/christian-korneck/get_win8key#files

Download the get_win8key.exe and save it on an easy to remember location like C:\Win8key now open up a PowerShell Shell. In windows 8 you can easily find this by going to start and just type PowerShell.

Now type:

 & "C:\win8key\get_win8key.exe"

(Including the & sign)

I hope this helped, if you have any suggestions feel free to leave comment.