Easiest Way to Recover XP and Vista Product Key from Dead or Unbootable Windows

As a computer tech guy, two things that I find very important is the speed of solving a computer problem and also convenience. I don’t want to be wasting the whole day trying to solve one problem and the customer sees me as unprofessional. Convenience in a way I don’t want to tire myself in opening up dirty and dusty computer case, swapping hard drives and etc. Very frequently I had to reinstall Windows for people. One very common annoying problem that I always face is the user lost his license sticker and I had to spend more time in retrieving the genuine Windows product key. There are a few ways to do it and most of them involves me having access to another working computer. For example, taking out the hard drive and fix it to a working machine, load the registry and retrieve the product key. Or I can boot up PCRegedit, load the registry and then decrypt the key from a working computer. All those steps are very time consuming and troublesome.

I tried very hard to look for a linux live CD that can retrieve the license key but I couldn’t find one. But here’s my opinion on the simplest and most convenient way to retrieve XP or Vista product key from an unbootable machine.
Joshua’s Key Reader or Keyfinder. Setting up UBCD4Win could take a while, so here’s a guide on how to create your UBCD4Win livecd.

1. Download UBCD4Win (250+MB) and install it on your computer.

2. Run UBCD4Win.

3. You need to select the source at UBCD4Win. Insert Windows XP installation disc and select your CD drive. If you don’t have Windows XP installation disc but your manufacturer provides a i386 folder in your C drive, then select C:\i386


4. Insert a blank CD, select Burn to CD/DVD and click Build. The whole process should take a while so go have a coffee.

Now to recover Windows product key, all you need to do is boot up the unbootable computer with UBCD4Win. Follow the instructions until you get to a part where it looks like Windows. Go to Start > Programs > System Information > Info. and Diag. Tools > You can either use Joshua’s Key Reader or Keyfinder

A. If you run Keyfinder, go to Tools > Load Hive… and select the Windows folder which is normally at C:\Windows and the genuine Windows Key will be display at the right pane.

B. If you run Joshua’s Key Reader, click the Read Remote Key button. Same thing as above, select Windows folder which is normally at C:\Windows. The Windows Product Key will be shown.

This method confirm to work on Windows XP and Vista 32-bit because I’ve tested it. See, all it took is one CD to do the job. Don’t need to have access on another working computer to decrypt the ProductID, or the hassle of taking out the hard drive and fixing on another computer. I noticed something weird on my Acer laptop running Windows Vista. The product key that is retrieved from the registry hive is different from the license sticker at the bottom of the laptop and I am very sure that the Vista is installed from the recovery partition. Anybody knows anything about this?