Why can't I get my windows product key when typing in the code?

Hey Myron, my name is Zach, and i'm an independent advisor. I can definitely understand why that's annoying, since it's always been an easy go-to command for getting your activation key. Unfortunately, the "wmic path softwarelicensingservice get oa3xoriginalproductkey" command only works with an OEM key on newer versions of Windows. After that activation, it's tied to the Microsoft account with a digital license.

You can try using ' slmgr /dlv ' in CMD to see if it produces helpful results, it gets activation ID's to at least show a partial ID. Other than those commands, there aren't any other key retrieval tools inside the default Windows 10 suite of tools. If you have any further questions or concerns, i'll be here to answer them! Definitely let me know if that command revealed any new info.

So the key is forever locked with my microsoft account? But the key I used for my current computer came from my old one which came with windows 10, how come I was able to access the key back then?

So to explain it in more detail, that computer shipped with a key. If you used the command on it, you should be able to retrieve your key because it's the OEM device the key was activated on. It's not locked, because if you had the key, you could re-use it, but it's basically trying to keep the key from being reused as easily as it was the first time, not wanting to repopulate it.

There are third party tools that can retrieve it, but none that are approved by Microsoft, and none that I could personally recommend. Natively, it's intentional for Windows to hide that key on machines it wasn't originally activated on. I've heard of some outliers as far as this function goes, but I know on my local machines, that's now it's gone for Windows 10 and 11 so far.

Not a problem, i'm really glad you were able to get your key, and thank you so much for letting me know my explanation made sense, too. Have a great weekend!

Ahh, that's a cheeky move from windows. Your explanation was also really easy to understand so thank you for taking the time out your day to do so. But fortunately, I was able to get the key, so all worked out in the end. And once again, thank you.