Windows – Retrieving Windows XP product key from registry using Parted Magic

product-keyregeditwindows xpwindows-registry

I've a laptop which has a Windows Vista licence sticker on it, but it was downgraded to Windows XP due to reasons. However, the HDD is broken (read errors and bad sectors everywhere) and it will not boot to windows without freezing. And to make matters even worse, it's a 1.8" ZIF HDD.

So ProduKey is out of the question.

I've tried offline nt password & registry editor without success (could not find the key), and now I'm trying my luck with a GUI. So I booted to Parted Magic from UBCD and opened PCRegEdit.

It asks you to open a file and you can then browser registry like you would in windows, but I still can't find the product key anywhere, like it wouldn't exist.

There is no HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion to be found.

What are my options? Hirens BootCD & live windows xp?

Best Answer

Your initial assumption was correct: the product key is located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion. The name of the key is ProductId. Double check it, it should be there.

I am not sure what software you use to browse your registry, but I would recommend to simply copy contents of Windows\System32\Config to some other external storage (usb key or smth), then import it to the registry editor on another machine and read it.

This short tutorial explains how to load registry hive for offline editing

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Windows – Unable to deactivate windows xp by modifying the license in the registry

This may be a little bit too obvious but the official Microsoft Support article has two possible methods for changing the product key. The first one is certainly the one you've already tried, but there is also a second method using a VBScript.

If you copy and paste the VBScript given in microsoft article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328874 into a text editor like notepad, and then save the file with a .vbs extension (use quotation marks around the file name if you find that the .txt extension is automatically appended).

Then execute that script with the new product key as an argument as shown in the instructions given beneath the script. Obviously if you have noted saved it to the root of your C:\ drive the exact command you'll need to type into the run dialog will include the location where you have saved it. Alternatively you can run this from the command prompt in the same way.

Linux – Retrieve/decrypt Windows 7 product key from Linux

There is a great tool available for Linux called chntpw. You can get it easily on Debian/Ubuntu via:

sudo apt install chntpw

To look into the relevant registry file mount the Windows disk and open it like so:

chntpw -e /path/to/windisk/Windows/System32/config/software

Now to get the decoded DigitalProductId enter this command:

dpi \Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Best Answer

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