Where’d The Product Key Go?

Up until Windows XP, the product key was always stored in the registry, within the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key, under the “ProductID” key in “Windows” under “SOFTWARE”, making the path something like: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows\ProductID. Unfortunately, that’s not the case since Windows Vista. It seems that Microsoft wanted to make it difficult for you to find your product key, so that you end up buying another license when you lose one. You don’t have to do this if you use Magic JellyBean KeyFinder. Although it sounds like something fishy, it is a legitimate application that scans your Windows installation for your product key.

Oh, and here’s the other thing: The Windows “ProductID” doesn’t show the key anymore, but shows a special ID to help Microsoft identify and distinguish between one Windows installation and another. This is used to prevent two Windows installations from using Windows Update, since it’s against the company’s policy to use one Windows installation on more than one computer.

Using KeyFinder

First of all, download KeyFinder’s ZIP file from this link. Open the ZIP file and extract it to a folder named in a way that you’ll remember in your local drive or on your desktop. Within the folder, you’ll find a file called “KeyFinder.exe”. Double-click it and you’ll find a screen that looks like this:

As you can see, you can also recover other product keys for anything else you install on your computer, depending on whether they have a key or whether they store their keys in a central location. Some applications store their keys in a file within their respective directories. For this, you’d have to do a little more investigation.

Conclusion

If manual searching doesn’t work, you can always find your product key with handy little applications like the Magic JellyBean Keyfinder. The alternative, in case Keyfinder doesn’t do anything for you, is Belarc Advisor, an application that gives you a full audit of your computer but also includes the product key. If everything else fails, you could always try your luck with Microsoft and give them a phone call for a replacement product key. It’s probably going to take a long time, but with luck, you’ll resolve your problem as quickly as possible.

As a habit, it is always good to backup your license keys when you first got your hand on the CD/DVD. You can easily take a photo of the license key with your mobile phone and upload the pic to your Dropbox, or Google+ account, so that when you need it, you know where to look for it.

Let us know what experiences you’ve had with the application and don’t hesitate to ask questions below. We’ll be more than happy to answer them!

RockXP is an application that scans your system and retrieves the product key for your Windows and passwords for other Microsoft applications. In the situation above where you have lost the key, but need it for a reinstallation, this is the best application for you.

There is no installation required to use RockXP. You just download the application and double-click to run it. At first run, it scans the version of the current Windows installation and whether you have admin right to the system.

After you have read and agree to the terms and conditions, you will be able to access the various functions of RockXP.

The first tab of RockXP is where you can scan and retrieve your Windows product key and serial number. If you want to change your product key, there is is also a field at the bottom for you to enter the new key. In addition, you can backup the activation file so that in the event you need to reinstall the Windows, you can restore the file and skip the activation process.

The Internet connection tab is where you can check the password of your network. This is also where you can retrieve your MSN password. I didn’t set up MSN on my Windows, that’s why you don’t see any information in the screenshot below.

As its name implies, the password generator tab is where you generate random passwords. Simply define the length of the password you want and click Generate. RockXP will automatically generate a random password of your defined length.

Overall, RockXP is not an application that you will use daily, but when you need a tool to restore the lost passwords, RockXP sure can do its job well.