Getting Microsoft Product Keys back from the registry (via StackOverflow and various other sources)

Every once in a while, someone hoses their computer far enough that it has to be reinstalled, but the original Microsoft product keys are misplaced, and some creepy anti-virus tool disallows the running of standard product key recovery tools like nirsoft’s.

Well, there is enough sourcecode that does recover it, just look for any of these strings:

• BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789
  (the characters that can be in a product key)
• DigitalProductId
  (the value name where various Microsoft products store their registry entry with encoded product keys)

Some hits:

• C# get Windows CD Key – Stack Overflow.
  
• PowerShell Code Repository – PowerShell GUI ProductKey.
• PowerShell Code Repository – IronPython Product key.
• PowerShell Code Repository – PowerShell get windows product key.
• SwissDelphiCenter.ch : …retrive Windows Product Key?.

–jeroen