KB ID 0001115
“Have you got one of those programs that gets the Windows key?”, My colleague asked me the other week. I said “Just download a key finder application?”, “Yeah I’ve tried that and is showing the code as all B’s”.
You may also just see ‘Product key was not found‘ on some software.
I sent him some more links and got back to what I was doing. He was having no joy with any other software, so I wandered over to have a look.
Solution
Let me save you some time: If you are trying to recover a Volume Licence Key (MAK, Multiple Activation Key) YOU CAN’T, they are deleted from the machine when the machine is activated (apart from the last five characters.)
How To Check If You are Running a Windows Volume Licensed Version;
Run the following command;
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slmgr /dlv
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Volume Licenced.
You can see that this particular machine is running on a volume licence. You will all note that further down it gives you the last five characters of the actual key “BHCH3”. This is to stop people just extracting a Volume Licence, once activated, because Windows removes the key. It takes the last five characters of the key and stores them in a file called ‘tokens.dat’, You will find it at
C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\tokens.dat
You will see the similar information if you run the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic Tool;
Retail
To recover a key from a retail version of Windows is easy, most free key finders will recover keys for you.
There is another curve ball, that might set you off in the WRONG DIRECTION as well, if you trawl the forums you will find scripts that will ‘tell you’ they decode the registry keys that usually hold the windows key, like this;
You will see posts that say, “no don’t use that registry key ‘DigitalProductID’ change it to ‘DigitalProductID4’ and it will work”. Well it does work! But sadly the key you get will not.
Download the scripts to see for yourself ‘GetProductKey‘
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
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