What can you do to solve them? How can we grab the information we need from the registry? That’s right – all of that information is in there if you know where to look for it and here is a program that can do that for you automagically!

It is a neat little piece of freeware called LicenseCrawler.

Once you download this little gem you can use it to scan your machine for serials. The program is 100% free – make sure you do not pay for it! Some of the download links ask for money – don’t use them! Use the free links! The author wants the application to be free, so lets keep him happy!

After downloading the application you simply run it and it will return all the keys from your computer. When you first run the application you will see a screen that looks like this:

You have the option of searching your machine or another on your network by replacing localhost with another machine’s hostname or IP address that you have access to.

You will need a user name and password for the remote machine with access to the registry. I would leave the registry setting set at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and simply hit that start button. The application will scour your machine and return a screen with all of your keys. Yes MUO readers it is that easy!

The software serial numbers seen above are not real and just used for illustrative purposes. The key that comes up for Internet Explorer is actually your Windows Product Registration. You can use this key to reinstall Windows. All your other keys can be used in reinstalling these applications on another machine or simply after a format. You have to manually write them down as there is no copy  and paste functionality – hey no big deal for a free application that works just as expected.

Without this application I would have got caught with having to re-buy programs or at the very least having to contact each software maker’s respective support line and begging for them to reissue another key. I HATE DOING THAT! Why should I have to?

Have you had success with another License retrieving application? There have been many of these applications over the years but this is the best one I have seen so far. It got ALL of the keys I needed. I have used something called The Magical Jelly Bean in the past but that is strictly for Microsoft Applications.

We would love to hear about your experiences with software serial numbers – either good or horror stories! Please share them with us in the comments!

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Of course, online serials or No-CD cracks can be found quickly, but for online games, amongst other things, an authentic serial code is a simple necessity.

Now you may be the school example of tidiness, keeping an alphabetical list of games, alphabetically sorting all yours by size, but most probably not.

If you’re even somewhat like me, often losing track of something after a mere five minutes, you can get in a lot of trouble – without those tiny scribblings, your sixty-dollar game becomes a useless piece of plastic.

Turning the house upside down might present a solution, but other methods don’t require quite so much bother. After all, we’re living in the digital age now.

Game Key Revealer

All your games’ serial codes get stored in the registry upon install – some even remain after removing the game in question! Though possible, manually searching these keys in the registry maze is a time-devastating task.

Luckily for you and I, people have been developing applications that can scan the registry in the search of keys from specific programs or games.

Game Key Revealer is one of these applications, supporting over 500 popular computer games from big-time game publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, THQ and LucasArts. Retrieving game keys of recent and popular games should be as easy as the flick of a mouse.

It really is that easy, running the executable and pressing one button to reveal most – probably even all game keys on your computer.

Now you’ve retrieved those keys, it’s advised to store it somewhere for safekeeping. Send yourself an email, save it on your stick, or print it out.

Game Key Revealer lets you export the keys to Notepad or Microsoft Word through File-Save.

Manually Retrieving a Key

It might happen though, that your game isn’t supported or found by the Game Key Revealer. If that’s the case, you can always manually scan the registry.

DISCLAIMER

Note that a computer’s registry is an extremely delicate place. Making mistakes – such as altering or deleting the wrong date – can easily mess up your whole system. Before working with the registry, always make a full back-up.

MakeUseOf will not be held responsible for any mistakes you make, nor any consequences of your actions – you’re a big boy/girl.

The process itself is easy enough. Do note that this is a hit’n miss technique. You might not find the key you’re looking for, or only be able to view it in encrypted format.

Searching the Registry

First we’re going to open the Registry Editor.

In Windows XP, go to Start -> Run… and type “regedit”.
In Windows Vista/7, go to Start and type “regedit” in the search box.

In the Registry Editor, press Ctrl+F or go to Edit -> Find…

Query for the game’s name, and wait for (any) results. Depending on your registry and the speed of your computer, this might take a few seconds or a few minutes.

If the serial key is not amongst the presented results, press F3 or go to Edit -> Find Next. The different pieces of data that relate to the game are often scattered across different pieces of the registry.

I hope this worked out for you. Do you know any other techniques to recover game keys? Or do you have a question about one of these? Don’t be shy, spill it out in the comments.

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AskTheAdmin here again with another free tool that I can’t live without. As TheAdmiN I have literally over 10,000 servers in production. Most of them are on the same corporate open license program and have the same serial number and need no activation. BUT there are more than a few machines that are not owned by my company and were installed, configured and shipped to us as-is.

When one of these machines crash or are about to fail there is little I can do other than call the respective company’s support staff. I hate relying on other people!

Now perhaps I need to build a quick replacement for one of these machines – say a label printing machine on loan from UPS or in your case maybe your home file server. Now if you don’t have the serial (aka product key) number for reinstalling – it is going to be a real… pardon my French… BITCH!

If the machine is still up and running and you have access to it you can install a tiny program that will give you the serial numbers for installed Microsoft Products including Vista, XP, 2000 and any office suite right up to our current 2007 offering.

It is free, totally safe and something that lives on my memory stick (it’s a portable app). Let’s take a look at how it works.

You can download it securely from SourceForge here. and the main site for it is over here.

No need to install it – just run the ‘exe’ from inside the zip file and it will return a screen that looks similar to this:

Your products will be displayed and there are the corresponding serial keys! Sweet! You will notice off the tools menu an option that looks like this:

It will let you change the registered user name for Windows or Office. Very handy.

When researching the newest version of this tool for my article (I was using a 2 year old version) I found this little chunk of information which made me smile:

It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications.

So it not only works for M$ applications but through a little forum magic you can make it work with almost anything that stores its password information in the registry! Double Sweet.

And then as if that wasn’t enough I continued reading and saw this:

Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.

Unbootable Windows Installations? This is a straight up life saver! Who knew I could like my little Magical JellyBean App any more! Just do yourself a favor and NOT tell people what it is called! Unless you are prepared for STRANGE and Dirty Looks!

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