Determine Product Key From Unbootable Hard Drive

My brother bought a tower a few years ago from a small computer shop in the area. The shop is no longer in business. My niece has been using the computer without problem since they first set it up for her.

Now the computer won't boot, giving a 'bad hard drive, replace immediately' type of message. They are all pretty sure that it's a Windows 7 PC, but nobody will swear to it. I can find noting on the outside (or inside) of the case to indicate the operating system or manufacturer. There is no 25 character Windows key sticker to be found.

I have removed the drive, slaved it to a Windows 7 tower and copied all her music, pictures and favorites to an external drive, but what's next? I have another 500GB SATA drive that I can put in the tower, but to what end? Is there some method to determine the OS and product key from the slaved hard drive? With that information I should be able to install Windows on the new hard drive although, without the manufacturer I'd be in the dark about where to find the necessary drivers.

Yes but since its encyypted it takes a special tool to extract from unbootable HD which someone will likely know and post since the title is so descriptive. I'll search for it if not when I get home.

Have you confirmed the HD is bad using the makers bootable diagnostics or test from Windows while slaved. The tests are in Troubleshooting tutorial link in picture below.

If HD is good then work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

I managed to extract a little more information from my sister in law... The tower was apparently constructed by the little out-of-business computer shop with Windows XP on it. The shop purchased Windows 7 Home Premium and installed a legitimate version on the tower prior to selling it to my brother. At one time there was a hand lettered sticker on the tower that gave the product key. That sticker has disappeared.

Since it was a homemade assembly I should be able to get the drivers from ASUS, who made the motherboard. My only problem now remains determining the 25 character product key that I would guess is still somewhere on the old hard drive (encrypted or not). They don't want to have to purchase a new product key (in addition to a new HDD) for a computer that was originally XP.

whs said:

Since the 'bad' HDD is apparently functioning as a slave on your Windows 7 system, I would image all partitions from that drive with your Windows 7 system. Then you can restore the image on the 500GB HDD that you have available and install that in the system of your niece. It's worth a try.

If that works, you should immediately run the Belarc Advisor to get a record of the the product keys.

Sounds great..... however the phrase 'image all partitions from that drive with your Windows 7 system' is Greek to me. What tools do I need to do that? Are there step-by-step instructions? And once that step was done how would I go about restoring that image to the 500GB HDD?

And I don't completely understand Belarc. I have used that on several perfectly running PCs and the product key that it returns is NOT the product key on the Microsoft COA.

AddRAM said:

If the shop installed Windows 7 on the pc, why didn`t they give you the packaging containing the dvd and the activation key, it`s totally illegal and just wrong to sell a pc with a hand written sticker on the pc case.

From the first two sentences of my thread: My brother bought a tower a few years ago from a small computer shop in the area. The shop is no longer in business.