How to Find a Product key for Your OS or Applications
There are many different ways to find a product key for operating systems or applications / computer software.
Find a Product Key for Windows
There are several programs which will find your Windows or program product keys, serial licences or install numbers so that you can reinstall the software on another computer. Microsoft doesn’t like you doing that, of course, so they are “hidden” away in the registry and hence need a specialist program to find them.
Windows Product Key Finder Program
One program that I have used to find a product key for Windows – and which is quick and can be run from a USB stick with no installation required is License Crawler by Klinzmann. This product key finder is designed to allow you to discover those “lost” keys which can be used again.
Product Key for Windows OS and Applications
Licence Crawler not only finds the Microsoft product keys for the Operating System (Windows XP, Vista, 8, 8, 8.1 and 10) but also Microsoft Office as well as other applications/programs such as Nero, VMWare etc.
How to Find a Product Key using License Crawler
Firstly download Licence Crawler from: http://www.klinzmann.name/licensecrawler_download.htm
Then copy it to a USB stick and double click the zipped file.
Then run LicenceCrawler (shown as an Application). This asks do you want to “Extract All” or “Run” or “Cancel”. You can Extract and then name a directory as required. I use the same directory name.
You can also choose “Run” if you want to. If you choose the “Run” option then several questions need to be answered if you have “Extracted All” the program runs and asks to choose button 1 or 2 or 3 to start the program. These numbers differ every time you run LicenceCrawler which is normal, it seems. Choose the number indicated, choose your language (default English) then Accept or Deny (“Accept” of course) then hit the “Search” button. Another Windows appears and then disappears in 20 seconds. Again this is normal.
LicenceCrawler is still running usually so let it finish, this can take several minutes depending on the speed of the computer and the speed of the hard Disk Drive.
Now in some instances when running LicenceCrawler an error comes back stating Run-Time error ‘339’ “Component MSCOMCTL.OCX or one of its dependencies etc etc is missing or invalid”. No problem, all you need to do is to right click LicenceCrawler (Application) and “Run as Administrator”.
Finally LicenceCrawler will report that it has found the product keys to various programs. These are the codes you need to either print out or write down to be used again. There are many combinations to this but on my computer it shows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE \Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version = Windows 7 Home Premium HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Registration\{ 91140000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} = MSDN version = Office 2010 (Office 14.0) product codes. Your computer will of course be different.
Find A Product Key Using Magical Jelly Bean
There is another program I use is called “The Magical Jelly Bean” which can be obtained from here: https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/
Magic Jelly Bean is another great free program which does need to be installed for it to work.
Installation only takes a few seconds and it is faster to produce the “product keys” than LicenceCrawler.
This program may not work with Windows 10 as the website states up to Windows 8.
Magical Jelly Bean do offer a paid version “Recover Keys” for US$29.95 which may assist in other product keys being found and saved.
Check Emails, Sales Dockets etc For Product Key
Another way to find a product key is from your emails, receipts and sales dockets but this is time consuming and the information is not always there anyway.
Recommendation
When trying to find a product key for an operating system or applications it is recommended that you try both of two products (LicenceCrawler and The magical Jelly Bean) or either and save those licence keys for future use.
