Recover Windows Product Key(Serial) When System Won't Boot [Tutorial]

Recover Windows Product Key When System Won't Boot[Tutorial]

Anyone who has worked with computers for any length of time will have run into the problem of a computer that won't boot because of a corrupt hard drive, or some other reason, but worst of all the sticker with the Windows product key is missing or unreadable so now you can't reinstall Windows with the same valid key.

For this tutorial we will be using a bootable USB drive with BackTrack Linux on it. This will be used to recover the registry files from the unbootable system.

We will also need a copy of the open source program "Enchanted KeyFinder"

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Anyone who has worked with computers for any
length of time will have run into the problem
of a computer that won’t boot because of
a corrupt hard drive, or some other reason,
but worst of all the sticker with the Windows
product key is missing or unreadable so now
you can’t reinstall Windows with the same
valid key. For this tutorial we will be using
a bootable USB drive with BackTrack Linux
on it. This will be used to recover the registry
files from the unbootable system. I have a
video tutorial covering how to create a bootable
USB drive using UNetBootin. I will place a
link on screen to open this tutorial. We will
also need a copy of the open source program
“Enchanted KeyFinder”. Open a web browser
like Internet Explorer. In the “Address
Bar” enter “ekeyfinder.sourceforge.net”,
and press enter. On the “Enchanted Keyfinder”
window that opens, click the “Download”
link. On the “Download” page, click the
“Latest download for Windows” link. When
asked what you want to do with the file, click
“Save As”. On the “Save As” window
that opens, select the desktop, or somewhere
else if you prefer, and click the “Save”
button. We now need a copy of the Windows
registry files from the system. The Windows
registry is located at “C:\Windows\System32\Config\”.
If for some reason the registry files are
corrupted there are backup copies in the “RegBack”
folder that is within the “Config” folder.
We now need to use the USB Drive with BackTrack
on it to recover the registry files. I will
place a link to another video tutorial on
how to use the BackTrack USB Drive to copy
files from another computer. Follow this video
tutorial and recover the “Config” folder.
We now have Enchanted KeyFinder, and a copy
of the registry files from the unbootable
system. Now all we have to do is recover the
product key. Find the “EKeyfinder” folder
we saved to the desktop before. There is not
installer for this utility, you just run it
from where you download the file. Double-click
to open the zip file. Open the “EKeyfinder”
folder. Double-click on the “keyfinder.exe”
file. When prompted, click the “Run” button
to just run the file from within the zip file.
On the “Open File - Security Warning”
window, click the “Run” button. It will
open to the “Enchanted Keyfinder” application
window. By default it connects to the local
system on startup. Here we can see my “Windows
7 Home Premium” product key information,
as well as my “Microsoft Office 2007”
product information. This is great for a system
that is up and running but we are going to
connect to the backup of the registry from
the corrupted system. To connect to the backed
up registry, click the “Tools” menu, then
“Load Hive”. On the “Browse for Folder”
window that opens, browse to and select the
“Config” folder we backed up, and click
the “OK” button. It will then load the
product key information from the backed up
registry. In this case the backed up registry
only has a key for “Microsoft Windows XP”.
If you have office or other supported software,
it will show here. Let’s review the “Microsoft
Windows XP” entry. It lists the version
of Windows you have installed. In this case
it is “Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack
3”. “Product Part No.” is the part number
of the media used to install Windows. Below
this it will tell you if it was installed
from “OEM media” or “Full Packaged Product”.
It sshows the “Product ID” and the corresponding
“CD Key”. It also shows the “computer
name”, “Registered Owner”, and “Registered
Organization”. You can save this information
out to a text file, by clicking the “File”
menu, then “Save As”.On the “Save As”
window that opens browse to the location you
want to save the file, and click the “Save”
button. You should now have the necessary
information to create a bootable Backtrack
USB drive, boot to the USB drive, recover
the registry files, connect to the registry
with EKeyFinder, and recover the product keys
from supported software.