Lost Your Windows Product Key?
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In order to install Windows XP (or other versions of Windows), a product key is required. When you purchase a computer, Windows XP is usually preinstalled and the product key is available somewhere in the documentation or CD that came with the pc. If you need to reinstall Windows XP at some point you will require this product key. Simple if you are organized but not so simple if you are like me and misplace such things. There have been many when I have attempted to install Windows XP only to discover that I’ve lost my product key.
So what can you do? Well the product key is stored on the computer but it is not in a readable form. A quick search on Google and you will see that there are many different programs available for free that will retrieve your product key. One such product is the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder freeware utility. When you run the utility on your computer it will extract the Windows product key (it also works for various versions of Microsoft Office). In some instances, it even allows you to change the product key. The latest version of Keyfinder will work on the following platforms: Windows 9x, Windows ME, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Office 97, and Microsoft Office 2003.
Tags: windows, microsoft, product key, diana huggins, lost key
4 Comments
ajith
January 31st, 2007
at 10:59am
u have told about retrieving the key from the installed os…
what about retrieving key from the ORIGINAL XP PROFESSIONAL SP2 CD if i lost my KEY provided by MICROSOFT…………..
Any tools for doing the retrieval?????????
Joseph
July 14th, 2007
at 6:20pm
I had a genuine copy of windows XP and the OS crashed so i had to repair it i did not have the windows XP CD so i got one from a friend to repair it turns out it was not genuine now i am being harassed by notifications saying that the copy of windows is not genuine.
Raymond
July 27th, 2007
at 5:07pm
What if you have lost the product key and there is no product key sticker on say a laptop and you just had the system rebooted and are stuck at the enter product key screen??
James Gosnell
June 15th, 2008
at 4:08pm
there is a problem this type of search in that the computer is already working ! ! ! of only some one could come up with a helper program that will search the CD on a working computer then it can be printed and then it could get the other computer up and running. Thanks but no this has not helped a bit.