Tip of the day: Find out whether you have an OEM copy of Windows

Tips, Windows 1 Minute

In the comments to a post entitled Everything you always wanted to know about Windows Product Activation, Tim asks:

How do you tell if a product has an OEM vs Retail install? … I have some integrated computers I am responsible for and when I call tech support, they sometimes ask which version of XP/2000 I am running, OEM or Retail.  I got thrown into this and the last guy didn’t keep up with things very well…any help is appreciated!

It’s easy to tell once you know where to look. Right-click the My Computer icon and choose Properties. (You can reach the same destination by starting in Control Panel and double-clicking System.) On the General tab of the System Properties dialog box, under the “Registered to” heading, you’ll see a product ID, which is divided into four groups of characters separated by hyphens. On an OEM installation, the second group of characters is always OEM; on a retail installation, you’ll see three numbers in this group.

That might be your only OEM fingerprint on a computer built in-house or by a “white box” system maker. But for systems from larger PC makers, including the so-called royalty OEMs, you should also see a product logo and the words “Manufactured and supported by” followed by the name of the company that built the PC. Here’s an example:

Oem_properties

One other piece of advice: If you’ve inherited a group of computers and don’t have a handy index to identify the product ID required to reactivate each one, use the wonderful Keyfinder utility to dig out Windows and Office keys, which you can copy to a database or print out and save for future reference. I first wrote about Keyfinder back in December 2002, and it’s still one of my most popular pages.

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Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

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2 thoughts on “Tip of the day: Find out whether you have an OEM copy of Windows”

  2. here is the best way to determine if it is OEM, Retail, or VLK. look at the file %CDdriveletter%\I386\setupp.ini. on NT and W2K systems id will have a number

    [Pid]
    ExtraData=01234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrs
    Pid=12345000

    PID’s ending in 000 are retail

    [Pid]
    ExtraData=01234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrs
    Pid=12345270

    PID’s ending in 270 are VLK.

    i dont have a OEM disk to check with but i am sure it is also similar.

    on Windows XP and server 2003 cd’s the PID is difrent the las 3 digets indicate the type of disk. I only have a DELL OEM disk but the pid is as follows.

    [PID]
    ExtraData=01234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrs
    Pid=12345OEM

    I am sure the reatil and VLK disks are similar but with difrent 3 digit extensions

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