Discussion Locked

product key

0 helpful

9 replies

by chester peterson Oct 10, 2002 last reply Oct 17, 2002

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I want to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows. I have win 98 on one partition and XP on the other. I cant find my original product key numbers and i was told that i can get them from the registry.
How can I do this?

9 replies

by thechas Oct 10, 2002

Run the program regedit from the run box on the start menu.

For Windows 98, the key is at hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion

The sub-key is ProductKey

You may also get the information using one of the system information utilities such as Belarc Advisor (www.belarc.com)
or Sandra from www.sisoftware.com

For XP, the product key is not specifically stored in the registry.
I saw one web posting that claimed to be able to recover the product key.

You reallyneed to keep the label with the key.
Per Microsoft's EULA, the paper documentation is as important as having the correct product ID on the PC.

Chas

by thechas Oct 11, 2002

If you get all "X's" then the product key was obliterated by the someone.
If the original W98 installation was a corporate license, a Ghost image, or a "auto" install by a manufacture, they may have been required to set the key to all X's to hide the "common" key used for the installs.

Chas

by chester peterson Oct 17, 2002

Poster rated this answer

by chester peterson Oct 10, 2002

When I look in the registry and when i use Belarc the product kwy is all X's and no numbers. Am I missing something?

by mike mullins Oct 10, 2002

If this is truly your copy and and you've lost the product key (which should be on the cover of the disk or on the computer). You can go to
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/tips_fixes.htm
and read about XP product key recovery or goto
http://snakefoot.fateback.com/default.html
and search for ViewKeyXP. It's a utility to extract the product key from the registry.
Good luck
0bytes