About to do open heart surgery on my new laptop. Could use some guidance.
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I found the following VBScript code (ARRGH!) for getting a product key. It seems to work, YMMV. It may help as a double check for some of the other ideas given in previous responses. My PC arrived with W10 and I immediately upgraded (?) to W11 as that had come out whilst the PC was in the post and it meant that I had nothing of my own on the PC to lose. I was fortunate as it was an in situ upgrade and it picked up the old key automatically, so didn't need the output from this code. To use, save as .vbs and just double click it.
' Get Windows Product Key
' From https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End FunctionThat script brings back nightmares. Makes me realize how easy hackers could spin up COM objects to do anything via a malicious website.