Today I had a bit of a challenge. I had a broken Windows XP system that wouldn’t even boot into safe mode. I had already decided to re-install, but didn’t know what key was used to install it.
My work mate Chris pointed me in the direction of ProduKey. ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of MS-Office, Windows, Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer. You can view this information for your current running operating system, or for another operating system/computer – by using command-line options. This utility can be useful if you lost the product key of your Windows/Office, and you want to reinstall it on your computer.
What can I say – does exactly what it says on the tin!
So, to recover the installation keys, I did the following:
1/ I downloaded Produkey onto my working Windows XP system.
2/ I connected up the hard disk from the mangled XP system using a handy SATA-to-USB adapter.
3/ Check which drive letter it was assigned, and ensured that I could see the windows directory. In my case, it was at H:\Windows
4/ I dropped to a command prompt, and typed “ProduKey.exe /windir H:\Windows”
5/ ProduKey examined the mangled installation and came back with the codes for both Windows XP and Office XP.
Download the latest build of Produkey now.