How To Check Which Windows Edition A Product Key Is For
There’s two ways to legally get Windows 10; you can buy a laptop that comes with an OEM license of Windows 10, or you can buy a license from Microsoft. If you buy a license from Microsoft, you can’t really go wrong however a lot of people purchase licenses through third party vendors as well. As such, there’s more room for error there and you might end up with a product key that doesn’t match the Windows edition you want to buy. Here’s how you can check which Windows edition a product key is for.
To find which Windows edition a product key is for, you need an app called ShowKeyPlus. This app can read product keys that are on your motherboard i.e. OEM keys but it can also let you check which Windows edition a key is for. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a key that’s read from your current installation or from your hardware. Any key that you have on hand can be checked.
Windows Edition – Product Key
Download and run ShowKeyPlus. Run the app and it will read the current key on your system and identify which version of Windows is installed. It will also tell you the current build number, and whether you’re running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows. You can save this information to a text file if you want by clicking the Save button.
Since we’re concerned with finding which Windows edition a product key is for, we need to switch over to the Check Product key tab.
Here, enter the key you have on hand, and it will check which edition it’s meant for. The app will automatically enter the dash between every five characters of the key.
ShowKeyPlus tells you if the product key is for Windows Home, Professional, or Education and it also tells you the license type i.e. is it an OEM license or an EULA (not linked to specific machine) license, and whether it’s a volume license or not.
Obviously, you cannot check a key unless you buy it first so this tool isn’t going to be much use if you suspect the person/vendor you’re buying a license from isn’t reliable. The tool is useful if you’re buying from a reliable vendor and you suspect they might have supplied the wrong keys. It’s a simple way to check and assuming there’s goodwill between everyone involved, you can get a refund or have the keys changed.
