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Today just when I started installing a new copy of Windows 10 on my laptop I realised that I hadn't retrieved the windows product key from the hard disk.

I quickly took out the USB stick which I was using to install windows and forcibly shutdown my laptop using the power button.

Now I can't boot into Windows so I made an Ubuntu bootable usb stick to access the files from the hard disk but the following message comes up:

Error mounting /dev/sda4 at /media/ubuntu/Data: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=999,gid=999" "/dev/sda4" "/media/ubuntu/Data"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda4': Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown
Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume
read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

What can I do in this situation? Is it possible to contact the manufacturer to get the product key?

Zanna
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Hassan Sajid
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2 Answers2

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If windows8, I believe the key is stored somewhere in the system BIOS.

As for accessing the NTFS partition. The problem you have is that Windows was not properly shut down so the Windows system is in a hibernate state. You should properly shut down Windows.

Have you tried using the Windows 10 installation USB to boot up? You could probably start the system up using any Windows installation media. Then, once the system is started up you can shut the system down properly.

You can also usually access a command prompt from the Windows installation media. From there you may be able to run the following command to resolve the issue:

powercfg /h off

Again, you run that command using the command prompt (sometimes called CMD) from the Windows installation media.

After you properly shut the system down, you will probably be able to access your files using Ubuntu if there are some files you need to retrieve before beginning the installation again.

Finally, Windows 10 sometimes has a repair mode or something similar to that you can use to try and repair whatever is left. Also, I believe Windows 10 doesn't require a product key as it verifies the legitimacy of the existing Windows media currently on the device and I believe it matches and verifies your unique device rather than requiring a product code entered manually but I'm not sure.

mchid
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Try to use ntfsfix (it's fix common errors and force Windows to check NTFS) by typing :

sudo ntfsfix /dev/name_of_the_partition

In your case :

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda4
Bilal
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