i am having problems figuring out the product key for windows and as a last resort i am coming here for help deciphering the partially faded product key.
The HDD that was in this laptop has broken and will not boot or be a slave that can be accessed by windows at all. i have used a program called spin rite on the drive which in first 4-7MB of the drive it goes very slow and am guessing can not fix those parts or windows should boot. SR says that there are defects in the media which is never good for a HDD. i am guessing that is were a key file or 2 are stored for booting windows.
here is a photo of product key label with about 7 of the 25 faded really badly. you should be able to download the full picture for a better look at the label.
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=828B0C3B1CA42CA8!1245&authkey=!AD0V5JN1boX5IN0&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.JPG
i have bolded the ones that i am sure of below
0(G)JW39 -DJPVQ - F(P)MFP3 -8Y2W?(5) - 88(B)R(k)25
this is for windows 7 starter on a 1.4GHz Atom with 1GB of ram.
the person i am fixing this for doesn't have money for a new version of windows and a new hdd, so the only way for me to fix the laptop is to find out this key.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Windows-7-Product-Key-Checker.shtml
i have used this to try to verify if some of the combinations work and none of the ones i have tried worked.
any help is appreciated
if you hit the back button on the link to the picture there is a excel sheet of GPU benchmarks, look at it and share it if you want.
Unfortunately the product key is encrypted in the registry and isn't easy to find. Trying to figure it out by looking at what the faded characters could be might be a little futile (you're looking at 36^7 possible combinations which is over 78 billion!), you may be able to narrow them down somewhat but it's a last resort guessing game.
I don't know if any of the product key finders in the following link will work in your situation. I have never used them, but they may be worth checking out. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/tp/topkeyfinder.htm
Otherwise, you could call Microsoft and request a replacement product key. Much cheaper than buying it new (around $10) and unnecessary imo. You have the OS already and I'm sure they get requests for replacement keys more than they'd like to admit (I bet whatever happened to your friends laptop isn't that uncommon). Here's a link that explains the process: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/osproductkeys/ht/windows-product-key-replacement.htm
Good luck.
the product key finders will not work because i can not get the drive to boot to windows or become a secondary drive. the only program i have that can read the drive is spin rite which is a lower level software that is mainly designed for recovery of sectors and not moving the data to a secondary drive.
i might try that second link, but i just hope i do not get charged $40 for calling the paid support line of microsoft, as the article suggests doing, when i called the toll free support they were telling me to pay $120 for windows 8, but the person that has the laptop doesn't have that much money. i might also try the manufacture again and see if the support can aid me in getting a replacement key as when i called them i was seeing if they had that particular key on the database.
all things considered you could just use daz loader
just consider it a tool to get what's owed to you
