The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Anyone knows why there's no Microsoft product key sticker on the bottom of the laptops?

    Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by tom_mai78101, Jul 29, 2015.

  1. tom_mai78101

    tom_mai78101 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    35
    Messages:
    216
    Likes Received:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    31
    I have an Alienware 13 laptop, late 2014, but I don't have a Microsoft product key sticker. Other than the service tag, it doesn't seem to have any other sorts of stickers in regards to the OEM OS product keys.

    Is it possible to retrieve the product key of the OEM OS on the Alienware 13 laptop via the service tag?

    This is for in case of emergency, where I would lose the recovery partition or when a house burned down, and I lost all my records of me owning this laptop.
     
  2. xMAXIMUSx

    xMAXIMUSx Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    111
    Messages:
    212
    Likes Received:
    48
    Trophy Points:
    41
    i bought the usb stick when i ordered mine , im sure you could order the usd stick or dvd's after the fact
     
  3. Porter

    Porter Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    786
    Messages:
    2,219
    Likes Received:
    1,045
    Trophy Points:
    181
    Sometimes the keys are embedded into the bios/firmware of the laptop. On my 3 windows 8 laptops I never have to type in the key to activate. I am fairly certain you can still read it using software but since I've never needed it once during many tens of reinstalls I don't see any point.
     
  4. Durendal

    Durendal Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    62
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    16
    key is stored in bios. You just install windows and not dealing with keys. Installation takes it from bios
     
  5. cloudpm

    cloudpm Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    53
    Messages:
    162
    Likes Received:
    20
    Trophy Points:
    31
    Hello guys,

    I upgraded my Alienware 2015 to Win 10. Everything works fine and I'm pretty happy with it !
    Nevertheless, I have a question : indeed, the windows key is embedded in the bios. Fine.

    But for windows 10, how will we deal with it ?
    I mean I did the upgrade but if I want to make a complete full new install of windows 10. How should I do ?
    Is the Win10 key changed accordingly in the bios ?

    Or will I need a new one from Microsoft ?

    Thx for your answer !
    :)
     
  6. Durendal

    Durendal Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    62
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Your win 8.1 key will be stored on MS servers under you MS account and will be validated as windows 10 key. From now you just perform clean install from ISO and log into your MS account during os installation. Thats all