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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?

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  • 1
    Just use one of the many tools that can do this. See magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder And FWIW, My friend's laptop's motherboard fried and he needs his Windows 7 product key Most laptops have a COA sticker with the product key on it. See it here (upside down, and an actual product key...) Aug 26, 2013 at 2:02

2 Answers 2

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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:.

Screenshot of ProduKey with default Windows key displayed and external Windows key displayed

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  • when i try to to find window\config it isnt there in the os J:... could it be located in a different file? also his product key on the sticker has faded of course. Aug 26, 2013 at 6:04
  • @DatQuestion, oops, it’s not Windows\Config, it’s Windows\System32\Config. Fixed; thanks.
    – Synetech
    Aug 26, 2013 at 15:47
  • ok thank you soo much i found the file once again thank you soo much kind sir/ma'am Aug 29, 2013 at 23:17
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    It's shameful how few computer technicians even know this is possible. For me, it has worked every time, even on non-booting computers (assuming the drive is readable). This is a very nicely laid out answer.
    – Jason
    Aug 20, 2014 at 18:30
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    I had to download from elsewhere to avoid the adware. I also had to run the program as admin before it would read the file. But otherwise worked fine! Mar 27, 2019 at 1:13
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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:

enter image description here

Then, enter the following command and press Enter:

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

enter image description here

You should be rewarded with your embedded license key.

Write it down and store it in a safe place!


Reference:

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    Finally some command-line-fu. What about from external drive with OS windows folder from another computer? (Like its done in the answer below.)
    – not2qubit
    Jul 22, 2021 at 10:34
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    Replace with Get-CimInstance. (ref)
    – not2qubit
    Jul 22, 2021 at 11:00

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