ProductKey

[Mike]

I have two little programs to retrieve the product key. They work fine, but
can I find it by myself (the registry, I think).
Or not?

 

[Mike Brannigan [MSFT]]

I have two little programs to retrieve the product key. They work fine, but
can I find it by myself (the registry, I think).
Or not?

Not in the format that you would recognise as the 5 by 5 key

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Mike
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[Will Denny]

Even in Win 95 the PK was hard to find - buried deep in a .dat file. Think hard it is going to be to find the XP PK - no simple Registry 'hack'.

 

[The Unknown P]

If you already have a valid Product Key and your XP is
activated through the WPA then I recommend you keep the
activation on a floppy and if you ever have to reinstall
XP to the machine that XP is activated on you won't need
to go through the whole activation process. In the
windows\system32 file look for wpa.dbl and copy it to a
floppy. Then when and if you crash and you reinstall XP
just choose the activate later option and once you are in
then copy the wpa.dbl back to the windows\system32 folder
and you won't have to go on line or call to activate. You
already will be. Have fun.

 

[Michael Stevens]

If you already have a valid Product Key and your XP is
activated through the WPA then I recommend you keep the
activation on a floppy and if you ever have to reinstall
XP to the machine that XP is activated on you won't need
to go through the whole activation process. In the
windows\system32 file look for wpa.dbl and copy it to a
floppy. Then when and if you crash and you reinstall XP
just choose the activate later option and once you are in
then copy the wpa.dbl back to the windows\system32 folder
and you won't have to go on line or call to activate. You
already will be. Have fun.

You keep giving this advice, and it does work, but not for reinstalls where
the system has been formatted and reinstalled. Plus, I find it faster just
to activate again over the internet even when you can use the backup files.
You should read up on activation here. See Hint #3
Click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into the address box
More info on XP activation.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
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[Alex Nichol]

If you already have a valid Product Key and your XP is
activated through the WPA then I recommend you keep the
activation on a floppy and if you ever have to reinstall
XP to the machine that XP is activated on you won't need
to go through the whole activation process.

That - I repeat- does NOT work if you do a reformat and new setup. that
creates a new 'instance' of the system, and the old wpa.dbl no longer
matches. It is a useful backup against accidents in a repair, but not
more