By Timothy Tibbetts |
Looking for your Windows and Microsoft Office product key? Typically, these are stored in the registry, and with the right tools, it's easy to find and retrieve.
Before you begin, make note that many of these utilities come from a category we call Covert Ops. Almost everything in the Covert Ops category will get flagged by your antivirus or security software because they assume something is trying to modify your registry. This is a false positive.
We do suggest that you back up the registry before you proceed. Here's how How to Back up or Restore the Windows Registry.
#1: MajorGeeks Windows Product Key Recovery is a simple VBS script to retrieve your Windows product key. We put this together because it uses a known trick that requires no installation and is only 1KB. If you just want to retrieve your key quickly and easily, give this one a try.
#2: ProduKey is our top download in this category. It can retrieve productIDs and CD-Keys for Microsoft Office, Windows and more. There's also a video tutorial from MajorGeeks to watch.
#3: Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is another tops downloader that uses a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications besides Windows. Last we knew, it was unable to retrieve your product key if you upgraded to Windows 10 from 7 or 8.
#5: PK Finder is much more simplistic than most. Just run it, and PK Finder will show you your Microsoft Windows key only. Our download mirrors are the portable version making it even more straightforward to use. If you're not a geek, this is an excellent choice to try first.
#4: ShowKeyPlus is for those who have not been able to find their key for one reason or another with the more basic apps. You can retrieve your product version or name, the product ID, the currently installed key and the OEM key. Your license key can be backed up to a text file, and you can even verify that it is valid. It can retrieve the following types of Microsoft Windows keys - OEM: DM, OEM: SLP, OEM: NONSLP, OEM: COA, Retail = Full Packaged Product (FPP), Volume: MAK = Multiple Activation Key, Volume: GVLK = Group Volume License Key, and WAU = Windows Anytime Upgrade.
While there are many tutorials on how to retrieve your product key from the registry or a command-prompt, the way Microsoft stores them seems to change frequently making the above app valuable.
Similar:
Common sense and software companies advise users to save their product keys securely in case they need them in the future, such as when re-installing your operating system. After all, you don’t want to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows only to find out that you don’t know what your Windows product key is. Unfortunately, that ever-so-important key can sometimes be misplaced or lost. In many cases though, keys can be recovered in Windows—no need to rummage through purchase e-mails or disk cases.
We offer two approaches for you to recover your Windows product key: searching through the Registry Editor or with a third party program. However, please note that both methods will require administrator rights to your Windows machine.
Windows 7 & Windows 8
Registry Editor
- Search and open Regedit via the Search function in Windows 7 or 8.
- In the left pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to the following directory:
Windows 7 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Win7 Windows 8 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Win8 - Right-click on the entry named ProductId and select Modify.
- The product key will be displayed in a new window.
Third Party Program
You can also retrieve your Windows product key via a third party program such as NirSoft ProduKey, which scans your Windows registry file for the product keys of other software. Install and run ProduKey to view a list of product keys stored in your registry file. However, it cannot find product keys for all programs. Most notably, Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 do not store their product keys in the registry file.
Office 2010 & Office 2013
Office 2010 and Office 2013 do not store their product keys in an easily accessible location in the registry file and many third party programs cannot scan for them. However, you can use a script to find the last five digits of the product key.
- Open the Command Prompt by searching for “cmd” in Windows.
- In the command prompt, type or paste in the following:
Windows (32-bit) Office 2010 (32-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus Office 2013 (32-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus Windows (64-bit) Office 2010 (32-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus Office 2010 (64-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus Office 2013 (32-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus Office 2013 (64-bit) cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus *Please note that if Office is not installed on your C: drive, you will need to update the drive letter in the above script appropriately.
- Once you have the last five digits, you can then back track the full key using the last five digits by contacting Microsoft.
Losing a product key does not mean you have to purchase the product again, as most of the time you can recover it by scanning through the registry file.
Have you ever lost a product key and needed to recover it?
Photo by Nick Perla, taken from Flickr Creative Commons
Summary
Article Name
How to Recover Your Microsoft Product Key - HardBoiled
Description
Lost your Microsoft Windows or Office product key? Not all hope is lost, as you can recover them with the right tools and know-how.
Author
Wallace Chu