Product Key Finder (Excellent & Free)

[Stoic Joker]

So a client's machine decided to get flakey and need to be replaced. ...And unfortunately the pricy network management suite we use decided it didn't want to collect the Acrobat X product key for said machine in the software audit logs (like its supposed to...). Which left me with a stack of COA cards and no clue which one went with dead machine X.

*Joy*...

Then I found this little jewel: Product Key Finder. It's a portable 64kb life saver that will pull the product keys out of the registry for damn near anything (Best I can tell) in about a second. Well worth having on a ThumbDrive, and a new favorite on mine.

[cranioscopical]

Thanks for the tip!

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Edit:

Good Lord, it's virtually instantaneous!

On W7-64 from an SSD it found all of my Adobe keys, and keys for Microsoft Office and Windows itself. That was before I'd even noted the fact that it was up and running.

There were, however, many more product keys that it didn't find.

[Krishean]

I use ProduKey from NirSoft. Looks like it's a little more extensive with options and command line parameters than the one you linked to, but it only works for a few microsoft products. The other one I used to use was The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. It used to be open source but they seem to have closed the sourceforge site. I still have the last source code and binaries that were available if anyone is interested. There are still closed-source binaries available on the site, but I'm not inclined to trust them.

[J-Mac]

Wow! Haven't seen Magic Jellybeab in a long time - didn't know it was still around!

I use SIW and it has a product key finder built in, though it doesn’t find a lot of keys, like most of these products. But it does find the Windows and Office keys along with a handful of others on my box.

Thanks!

Jim

[mwb1100]

Magic Jellybean was forked to another Sourceforge project when it went back to closed source:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ekeyfinder/

Some history:

http://ekeyfinder.sourceforge.net/index.php?lang=en&page=about


I don't know if anything much is being done with it, but there it is.

[ha14]

well found only two microsoft keys, perhaps Belarc Advisor is more apropriate?
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[IainB]

+ 1 for what @ha14 wrote.
Belarc Advisor will tell you almost everything you might care to know about your system, and seems to be able to find any and every registration key you may have on your system. (Though I didn't get it for that purpose.)
And it's FREE as well.    

There are some others that I have previously tried out - including NirSoft Produkey and Magic JellyBean, and others that I don't recall the names of now.

[Stoic Joker]

+ 1 for what @ha14 wrote.
Belarc Advisor will tell you almost everything you might care to know about your system, and seems to be able to find any and every registration key you may have on your system. (Though I didn't get it for that purpose.)
And it's FREE as well.   

I'll keep that in mind also, but I usually try to avoid anything that requires an install because by the time I get called in the machine in question is usually barely stable enough to run in safe mode. That tends to make Quick-N-Dirty a SOP mandate. 

I do have the NirSoft ProduKey utility also, I'd actually forgotten about it. Their stuff is always a keeper.

[IainB]

...I usually try to avoid anything that requires an install because by the time I get called in the machine in question is usually barely stable enough to run in safe mode.

Well, you could be proactive about it and periodically run Belarc Advisor on each asset (deskop/laptop) that you have to support - or, if not periodically, then initially at least.
That would give you a lot of the As-built(*1) documentation (the Belarc Advisor report with the various software reg. keys in it).

You would then have the relevant configuration item information to be able to rebuild that asset - without needing to wait to get that info till it fails.

Note: *1 - The 3 config. items in the CMDB per ITIL - hardware spec., software backup/copies, as-built documentation).

[tomos]

The license might be a factor....

Q: Can I purchase a license to run the Belarc Advisor on my corporate network, or my customer's network?

A: We do not permit use of the Belarc Advisor for commercial purposes, however we suggest that you take a look at these products, which we do license for commercial use:
[no comparable products listed...]

[Curt]

most of the above mentioned programs are amateurs, compared to the $25 Recover Keys:

Which 3134 software activation codes can Recover Keys retrieve?

Edited:
oh, yeah, I should of course tell that it didn't find some 300-400 other keys.

[mwb1100]

most of the above mentioned programs are amateurs, compared to the $25 Recover Keys

I believe that Recover Keys is the outfit that bought Magic Jellybean and re-closed the source.  Looks like it supports an impressive list of software.

[Curt]

-my first screenshot (Select action: Scan this and that) made it look as if the $25 version could do all this. That is not the case:


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