How to Activate Windows Online
This guide applies to Windows 10 and Windows 11 Pro or Home — excluding N editions. If Windows is already installed and you have your product key, activation takes about a minute.
Go to Settings → Update & Security → Activation, click Change product key, enter your 25-character product key and confirm. Windows will activate online.
How to Install Windows
If Windows is not installed yet, start with the installation. If you already have Windows installed, skip directly to the activation instructions below.
- Download the Media Creation Tool or a Windows ISO file. You can find the download links on our Downloads page .
- Create Windows installation media on a USB flash drive (recommended) or DVD.
- Turn on your computer and select the USB drive or DVD as the boot device. On most computers, you can open the boot menu by pressing F11 or F12 during startup.
- Install Windows 10 or Windows 11. Important: select the edition that matches your product key and make sure you choose an edition without the letter “N” in its name.
How to Activate Windows
- Open the Start menu and click Settings (the gear icon).
- Go to Update & Security and open the Activation tab.
- Click Change product key.
- Enter the 25-character product key from your email exactly as provided, then click Next.
- Windows will connect to Microsoft’s activation servers and activate automatically. That’s it.
After entering your product key, you may see an activation error.
If you purchased a GetCID activation key and the error
code ends in 008,
follow our GetCID activation guide here
.
If you purchased a key for online activation, contact us at
[email protected]
and we’ll help you resolve the issue.
Don’t have a Windows product key yet? Get one from Keycode.cloud and receive your product key by email after purchase.