Ok, since I explained it bad in the other topic, I'll explain it here.
I wiped my Windows 7 since I couldn't boot into it.
Now I am on a new copy freshly installed, and need my old key to activate it.
So how can I go about getting the key from my old installation? I have every file saved (from a complete disk backup). Is it stored in a file, or registry, or what?
Take look on the COA
Product Key Number for Windows 7 - Find and See
Sorry. I can be a little literal-minded.
Where is the COA (certificate of authenticity) which is supposed to be delivered with every copy of WIndows, or Windows PC?
If you have a copy of your old Windows Registry, the key is present there. Unfortunately, it's encrypted. All of the utilities I've ever used to read the key would only read it from the registry of the active copy of Windows. Maybe someone else can point you to a utility that can find and decrypt it.
I've never used this utility, but it looks like it should work:
ProduKey - Recover lost product key (CD-Key) of Windows/MS-Office/SQL Server
You'd have to extract the Registry from the backup. Maybe it'd be simplest to extract the whole Windows directory.
Good luck.
bobkn,
The utility works. There is a link to it in my sig. If he could boot up his old disk, then he would be able to use the utility to recover the info he needs.
For a laptop, the COA sticker is located on the bottom of the laptop.
Hi, new guy here.
If the system is unbootable, but you can still connect it to another Windows PC and read the disk, I have used this method before - - -
Recover Windows XP Product Key from ntuser.dat in Corrupted or Unbootable System « My Digital Life
Good Luck!
Edit - -
The Link is about Windows XP, I have used it on Vista disks.
This link shows basically the same method, and claims that it works on Windows 7.
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/...-key-recovery/
Last edited by KEDecilon; 15 Sep 2011 at 21:38. Reason: Added information
The utility bobkn posted worked. Even though I found the box an hour later :P. Thanks all for your help.
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