Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 June 15

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June 15

Retrieve Windows product key

A relative's laptop recently died of motherboard failure. There are many other components still in good condition, including the Windows 7 installation on the still working hard disk. If I was to connect the hard drive by USB to another PC (running Windows or Linux) is it possible to use a software tool to retrieve the Windows product key? The original Certificate of Authenticity, that was on the bottom of the laptop, got destroyed/defaced by the same liquid that caused the motherboard to fail. Astronaut (talk) 10:36, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Try ProduKey.[1] It has command line options to retrieve keys from a slaved drive. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:54, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

If the laptop came with that version of Windows (as your mentioning the certificate of authenticity would suggest) then the Windows licence will surely be an OEM one. That means the product key will be be valid only for that make and model (strictly the licence itself only applies to the specific, now deceased, machine - Microsoft say the licence isn't transferable). So if you tried to boot off that disk on a substantively different machine, it would fail the Windows Genuine Advantage check. For retail licences (where you bought Windows 7 in a box by itself and installed it on a machine) then they seem to take a somewhat more liberal stance (some upgrades to the same machine present a Ship of Theseus problem for them). -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 11:18, 15 June 2014 (UTC)