It takes just 2 seconds to determine the activation status

Mar 23, 2017 06:05 GMT  ·  By

There are several ways to determine whether your Windows 10 version is activated or not, and without a doubt, most users are perfectly fine with going to the Settings app to check this.

And while all the information is indeed displayed under Settings > Update & security > Activation, there’s actually a much easier way to find out whether the operating system is activated correctly or not, and it all comes down to running just a simple command.

All you have to do is copy the following command, click the Start menu, and simply paste the copied line. Press Enter and the operating system should display a simple dialog telling whether Windows 10 is activated or not.

slmgr.vbs /xpr If activated, the message you see in the dialog message should sound like this: “Windows(R) X edition: The machine is permanently activated,” with X obviously varying by your version of Windows.

Of course, you can create scripts using this command to check the activation status with just a double-click on a file placed on the desktop, or you can also use it in a Command Prompt window should you want to do it the traditional way.

In case Windows 10 is not activated and you get an error message, Microsoft provides some guidelines on how to diagnose the problem and successfully complete the process.

Additionally, you can always rely on the Activation troubleshooter should you want to have the whole thing performed automatically, though these little tools have proved to be quite useless most of the time. To launch the Activation troubleshooter, go to Start > Settings > Update & security > Activation > Troubleshot, of course using an administrator account.

If nothing works and you can’t get Windows 10 activated by any means, you should contact Microsoft and see if there’s any problem with your license.