WinXP - Get CD Key when it won't boot?

**arch0nmyc0n** · January 25th, 2008, 01:20 PM

Long story short, a customer sent us a computer and I can't get it to boot into windows. I asked this question years ago, but is there any way to get a CD Key from a hard drive when it's attached to another machine or some other way? The drive is damaged, but not extensively. I remember win98 you could grab it from a file on the hard drive. And I remember them saying it wasn't possible in XP because it was stored differently. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a way to do this now?

PS. Lets stick to the topic at hand please. She's legit, but lives hours away and has bags and bags of stuff and doesn't understand what I'm asking for.

**arch0nmyc0n** · January 25th, 2008, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

Whats preventing the PC not to boot into windows, your bios does not detect the drive /BSOD error

A number of bad sectors on the hard drive found using seatools (maxtor hard drive). The machine tries to boot but restarts. A fresh install of windows on a new drive works fine.

**NooNoo** · January 25th, 2008, 03:35 PM

Here you go Arch

ProduKey
ProduKey is a small utility written by Nir Sofer (who's wonderful freeware tools can be downloaded on his website at http://www.nirsoft.net, that displays the Product ID and the CD-Key of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP and 2003 operating systems, Microsoft Office products, Microsoft Exchange and SQL Servers. The nice thing about this (freeware) tool is that you can view this information for your current running operating system, or for another operating system/computer on your network by using command-line options.

from here

**arch0nmyc0n** · January 25th, 2008, 04:14 PM

Noo.... Thank you very much.

I'd ask you to marry me but my wife would kill me.

Would you settle for an "I owe you a beer"? Your in England right? If so, I'll be in your "neck of the woods" beginning of May in Manchester to pay up.

**arch0nmyc0n** · January 25th, 2008, 05:55 PM

It works fine. The program has command line parameters, I simply told it where the windows folder was for the installation in question (f:\windows in my case) and it told me the keys.

The drive was obviously hooked up to a working machine in order to do this of course. The drive detects and posts fine within BIOS. Don't confuse booting with posting.

**NooNoo** · January 25th, 2008, 05:59 PM

Manchester is a tad north of me... But May I might be in Scotland! Either way, I'll collect that beer if I can!

**MobilePCPhysician** · January 25th, 2008, 10:36 PM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

Both programs will only generate the COA off the Bootable partition.

windir [Windows Directory]Load product key information from another operating system on the same computer. The [Windows Directory] specifies the base folder of Windows installation, for example: c:\windows, c:\winnt This feature is only supported on Windows 2000/XP.

Please stop trying to question Noo. This program works as advertised. Slave the hard drive in your system and run it. It will pick out a product key.

You need to relax.

**MobilePCPhysician** · January 26th, 2008, 12:03 AM

The key to this is command line parameters. I've slaved a customers drive in my machine and used this program to pull the product key. it works. Maybe you need to read the directions.

**Niclo Iste** · January 26th, 2008, 02:51 AM

I tried the link for the utility but it kept on showing as a dead link

sucks I've been looking for a tool like that for years.... If anyone can help me find another link I'll promise to marry you regardless if you have a husband

that or i can say thank you really nicely.

**EDIT**
OK nevermind I figured out that the link had a typo. Sorry ladies. Until next time hehe.

**crumbs** · January 26th, 2008, 02:58 AM

Originally Posted by Niclo Iste

I tried the link for the utility but it kept on showing as a dead link

sucks I've been looking for a tool like that for years.... If anyone can help me find another link I'll promise to marry you regardless if you have a husband

that or i can say thank you really nicely.

**EDIT**
OK nevermind I figured out that the link had a typo. Sorry ladies. Until next time hehe.

Head up Tip do not download Magic Jelly Bean it was caught by our tech's av ... malicious program.

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 03:16 AM

Crumbs there is nothing malicious about Magic Jelly Bean. Quite a few tools show up as malicious because the AV is looking for a set of behaviours, not a particular program.

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 03:20 AM

Originally Posted by Niclo Iste

I tried the link for the utility but it kept on showing as a dead link

sucks I've been looking for a tool like that for years.... If anyone can help me find another link I'll promise to marry you regardless if you have a husband

that or i can say thank you really nicely.

**EDIT**
OK nevermind I figured out that the link had a typo. Sorry ladies. Until next time hehe.

I fixed the original link.... now about that promise

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

Then the program should generate the COA numbers off of .iso please post the command that generate this.

Which iso? The context here is a hard drive that won't boot windows.

**Platypus** · January 26th, 2008, 11:16 AM

The product key is stored in the registry. An extraction program just has to read the correct location in the registry on any drive, it has nothing to do with where Windows has booted from. Since it involves reading a file, an iso has to be mounted as a drive. Once it is, it works the same as any other drive and if there's a Windows registry there you can extract the product key.

**Platypus** · January 26th, 2008, 11:33 AM

Crumbs/OMG, security tools and other semi-hacky software can be flagged as malware by heuristic scanners. Often it's the Mad Code Hook Injection Driver (Mchinjdrv), which is used by both malicious and legitimate programs.

Here is TrendMicro's documentation of MagicalJellybean:

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/gray...EAN.A&VSect=Td

and if you scroll down to Oct 26, 2006 on the program publisher's website you'll see the response.