How do I retrieve a product key from another hard drive?

My friend's laptop motherboard died and he needs his Windows 7 product key from the hard drive (which is still working).

I connected the old drive as a secondary drive to my own computer and tried using a key finder utility, but it just keeps showing my own product key and not his.

Is there a way to retrieve the product key from the old drive using my computer?

Solution 1:

It’s possible, but a little tricky. You need to extract the product key from the Windows registry hive files from the target drive.

There’s different ways to do it, but probably the quickest and easiest way is with Nirsoft’s ProduKey:

1. Download, extract, and run the program (it will show your own key by default)
2. Press F9 to bring up the Select Source dialog
3. Select Load the product keys from external Software Registry hive
4. Browse to the SOFTWARE registry hive. For example, if you have the drive from the other system mounted as drive Z:, then you would probably select Z:\Windows\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
5. Click [OK]

It should read the hive file from the other copy of Windows and display the appropriate product key.

In this screenshot, I ran ProduKey in Windows XP (installed in C:) and then extracted the key from Windows 7 (mounted as T:). Note how it still says C:\Windows since Windows 7 was indeed installed in C:, even though it’s files are currently accessible from T:.

Solution 2:

If you want to find the UEFI-embedded key and write it down, you can do so quite simply.

Just open the Start menu, type powershell, and run the Powershell application that comes up:

Then, enter the following command and press Enter:

(Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from SoftwareLicensingService').OA3xOriginalProductKey

You should be rewarded with your embedded license key.

Write it down and store it in a safe place!

Reference:

• https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/