Recover OFFICE Product Key from failed HDD

[frase]

Had a customer whom had a Sony AIO n50 system. The hard drive had failed, so the recovery partition was corrupted as well. This meant I had no Idea what the Product key was for OFFICE.

So what I ended up doing after some time was use ProduKey to find product key -

• I removed the faulty HDD from the Sony System
• Hooked it up to my HDD Dock via USB
• Booted into Linux - which I have on a seperate drive when needed
• Browsed to the HDD directory on the Faulty HDD "x:/windows/sys32/config/RegBack"
• Copied the directory "/config/regbackup" to a USB stick
• Shutdown Linux
• Booted into Windows
• Inserted USB with the backup copied onto as above
  
• Ran ProduKey as ADMIN
• Selected "Load the product keys from an external Registry Hive" then selected ..BROWSE
• Targeted "x:/windows/sys32/config/RegBack"
• Selected "SOFTWARE.FILE"
• Selected OPEN and OK

Now I have all the product keys from the system Hope helps some, others may be aware but I wasnt.

 

[gikstar]

So you were not able to attach the drive to your bench system and boot into bench systems Windows O/S, run Produkey as Admin and select the attached hard drive as the drive to run the program on?

 

[frase]

So you were not able to attach the drive to your bench system and boot into bench systems Windows O/S, run Produkey as Admin and select the attached hard drive as the drive to run the program on?

No as Windows would not read or detect HDD. Thats why I had to use a Linux Distro to detect and mount HDD.

 

[Markverhyden]

No as Windows would not read or detect HDD. Thats why I had to use a Linux Distro to detect and mount HDD.

Yep, I've had that happen a few times as well. Linux rulz!!!! LOL!!!

 

[technophobia]

Had a customer whom had a Sony AIO n50 system. The hard drive had failed, so the recovery partition was corrupted as well. This meant I had no Idea what the Product key was for OFFICE.

So what I ended up doing after some time was use ProduKey to find product key -

• I removed the faulty HDD from the Sony System
• Hooked it up to my HDD Dock via USB
• Booted into Linux - which I have on a seperate drive when needed
• Browsed to the HDD directory on the Faulty HDD "x:/windows/sys32/config/RegBack"
• Copied the directory "/config/regbackup" to a USB stick
• Shutdown Linux
• Booted into Windows
• Inserted USB with the backup copied onto as above
  
• Ran ProduKey as ADMIN
• Selected "Load the product keys from an external Registry Hive" then selected ..BROWSE
• Targeted "x:/windows/sys32/config/RegBack"
• Selected "SOFTWARE.FILE"
• Selected OPEN and OK

Now I have all the product keys from the system Hope helps some, others may be aware but I wasnt.

Thanks for the tip- definitely useful in a pinch

 

[lcoughey]

Perhaps you should refine this a little and then add as a resource.

 

[OzarkGeeks]

Good to know. Thanks for sharing!

 

[kwisher]

So the HD had not totally failed as it could still be mounted in Linux? Curious as to why Windows couldn't mount it also.

 

[fencepost]

So the HD had not totally failed as it could still be mounted in Linux? Curious as to why Windows couldn't mount it also.

There are times where Windows will look at the drive and say "I know that things are wrong here, I'm not going to mount this and risk corrupting it further." That may also tie in with Windows generally mounting everything read-write unless it's actually on copy protected media.

Linux (aka "Honey Badger") Doesn't Care that there are problems with the NTFS volume, and will mount it, but at least on a lot of the rescue distributions run from CD/DVD/USB it'll mount the partitions read-only. This can be very handy for cloning or for copying data off before you do anything more extreme.

 

[catqueenbb]

Worked for me. Thanks for the tip

 

[CleverTechnology]

Much thanks, I just finished using this process to recover the product key for Office. Thanks a million. You saved me a ton of time.

 

[GTP]

When all else fails....there's Linux!

 

[NviGate Systems]

You can also use Mac OS X if you have a Mac nearby, as most Macs ship with Read Only NTFS support. You can also make a disk image with Mac, but I never had success restoring it.

ProduKey is an awesome tool. I often save the Windows/system32/config folder and create the same folder structure in my backup system so ProduKey can read it.

 

[kwisher]

I had a similar situation this week. Customer borked her Win-10 where it wouldn't boot, was stuck at "Choose your keyboard" screen during the auto repair process. I booted to a Win-10 live boot (proper name escapes me) and was able to run Fabs and Proukey to save her data and Office key.

 

[cypress]

I had a similar situation this week. Customer borked her Win-10 where it wouldn't boot, was stuck at "Choose your keyboard" screen during the auto repair process. I booted to a Win-10 live boot (proper name escapes me) and was able to run Fabs and Proukey to save her data and Office key.

Wow same thing here just this past weekend as well!

 

[Pixelated Tech]

Perhaps you should refine this a little and then add as a resource.

Agreed, many will like this.

Linux has always been a go-to resource for me. It has saved my bacon many times.

 

[frase]

ok no problem but how would you like it refined?

 

[johnrobert]

I think later versions of Office don't put serial in registry

 

[Kirby]

I have always known there is a way to do this and have needed it a few times, but just didn't have the time to look it up. I've saved this to a text file and put it in my "Fixes" directory for later reference. Thank you.

 

[HCHTech]

I think later versions of Office don't put serial in registry

Yup. 2010 & earlier only. Later versions tied to a microsoft account, but as long as you can get into that account, you're good. Always fun when nobody remembers what microsoft account was used....or they know the account, but not the password and no longer have the email address or cell number MS has to attempt a password reset = SOL