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rutlandictFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Corrupted HDD can't boot to windows. Need to retrieve OS licence key as no sticker on case.

I am unable to boot into any of the safe mode options or standard windows logon. The data is accessible when the HDD is caddied to another machine. The machine does not have a OS licence key on the case and our client can't find it. There are lost of free useful keyfinders around but none of them seem to have the option to locate the licence key on an external HDD. All they do is find the OS licence key on the main machine. I found a really useful link for retriving the key from the registry but this failed as the specific file needed is corrupted.
Links are below:
http://www.dagondesign.com/tools/windows-xp-key-decrypter/
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/windows-xp-product-key-recovery/
Is there a free software keyfinder for finding on external HDD or drives that are connected. Or failing this one you can pay to upgrade / full package for this feature.

Ive had a look at jellybean software.

Thanks in advance.
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Jackie Man
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You can use Majic Jelly Bean :)
Scan another or non-bootable Windows
http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Just as you said, take the dead disk from the machine and plug it into a good PC.

Cheers,
Hades666
This is where the registry files are stored:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config
And the best what you can do is to copy them to a clean xp installation hoping it would work (maybe on a virtual machine) then you can set up a working machine, which of you can retrieve your key. It is stored in DigitalProductId.
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ASKER

This worked perfectly. I just changed the source to all disks currently plugged in to your computer and it found the key immediately. Very good free and quick solution. Thanks.
Thanks to the other EE comments. I will have to look into the majic jelly bean feature futher as struggled to get the key.

Thanks again!!!!!