But thankfully there are other ways you can do this by using very popular Live Windows CD’s that can get the key from a Windows system that cannot boot. We’ve tried very hard to look for a linux live CD that can retrieve the license key but couldn’t find an obvious one that doesn’t involve a long process. All those steps work but are a bit fiddly and time consuming. Or you can boot up PCRegedit, load the registry and then decrypt the key from a working computer. For example, taking out the hard drive and attaching it to a working machine, running a tool that can read product keys, load the registry hive from within the program and retrieve the product key.

There are a few ways to retrieve a key from an unbootable computer and most of them involve having access to another working computer. A big pain these days is Windows product key stickers on many machines such as laptops and netbooks are paper and don’t have the plastic protective coating meaning the key can easily become faint and impossible to read accurately.

One very common and annoying problem that often arises is the user doesn’t have their Windows license to hand and you have to spend time in retrieving the genuine Windows product key from the system if the hard drive is readable. If you’re a computer technician or the neighborhood tech geek, quite frequently you could find yourself having to reinstall Windows for people. Restoro has been downloaded by 0 readers this month.Download Restoro PC Repair Tool that comes with Patented Technologies (patent available here).Ĭlick Start Scan to find Windows issues that could be causing PC problems.Ĭlick Repair All to fix issues affecting your computer's security and performance.

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