We have already talked about resetting the operating system. This basically resets the operating system to the state right after installation. All personal files and applications are removed from the computer, and settings are returned to their defaults. The option to reset the PC is available in the Control Panel of the operating system.

Reinstallation on the other hand simply refers to installing the operating system a second time on a computer.

You might be asked to enter the Windows product key in both situations. On a side note: I reinstalled Windows 8 and was not asked to enter a product key.

The problem here is that Microsoft is not supplying the product key with the operating system. You won’t find it in a text document that is part of the installation files nor on the official website.

You find the answer in a forum thread (!) over at the Microsoft Developer Network forum. A user asked the following question on the forum:

I’m reinstalling Windows Developer Preview and need to enter a product key. What key do I use?

A Microsoft employee replied with this answer:

If you need to reinstall Windows Developer Preview or use the Reset functionality, you might be asked to enter this product key:

6RH4V-HNTWC-JQKG8-RFR3R-36498

If you’re running a server version of Windows Developer Preview, you can use this product key:

4Y8N3-H7MMW-C76VJ-YD3XV-MBDKV

Note: These product keys are only for use with the Windows Developer Preview version of Windows 8.

There you have it. If you need to reinstall Windows 8, you need to use the product key 6RH4V-HNTWC-JQKG8-RFR3R-36498.

If you need to reinstall the server version of Windows 8, you use the product key 4Y8N3-H7MMW-C76VJ-YD3XV-MBDKV instead.

The keys are only compatible with the developer preview of Windows 8. It is likely that they wont work in the beta or release candidate, and 100% certain that they won’t work in a final version of the operating system. (via)

I get a regular tech mailbag of people asking for advice and support and you too can email me at mike[at]MVPs.org, I try to answer every question put to me.  I had an unusual one this weekend though from someone who said they’d bought a new laptop with an upgrade card for the full version of Office, but that while some apps in Office were running smoothly, others were saying they weren’t legitimate and wouldn’t run at all.

The Office purchase card is something that PC sales people in retail outlets will try and sell you with the PC.  They’ll tell you that Office Starter is “limited”, no better than Microsoft’s online apps or Google Docs.  They’ll probably add that that the programs in it, which just include Word and Excel will “hardly do anything” and that you must upgrade if the experience of using Office on your PC is to be enjoyable in any way.

Well I’ve used Office Starter and I can assure you that unless you want to use more advanced features such as adding referencing and notes to documents in Word, or adding Pivot tables in Excel, it’s perfectly good and for most people will do everything you need.  There’s simply nothing wrong with Office 2010 Starter and the best part is, it’s completely free.

When you run it for the first time you’ll be presented with the screen here, where it will give you three options.  That you’ve already purchased a full copy of Office and want to enter your product key, that you want to go online to purchase office, or that you just want to use the basic Office 2010 Starter.

The problem can occur when you choose the second option and go and buy a full copy of Office.  Here the Office.com website will tell you that you can download and try a free 60 day trial.  This user had done just that and obtained a trial product key for Office Professional.  After trying Office for a couple of months he went back to the computer store to purchase his activation card.  Looking at the different versions however he plumped for Office 2010 Home and Student as it was far cheaper than the Professional edition and, getting home, entered his new product key into his PC.

The problems then began as Word, Excel and PowerPoint worked fine on his computer, but Outlook, which had been installed with his Professional trial, couldn’t.  It would tell him that it wasn’t a legitimate copy, had expired and kept prompting him to enter a valid product key.  This as you can imagine caused him considerable confusion.

The problem arises because Office 2010 Starter is intended to install easily and simply without the need for downloads.  When you download a trial version of Office 2010 and install it on your computer it will put an Office folder in your start menu but it won’t remove the link for the Starter edition.  This will still enable you to convert the installed copy of Starter, which is different to, but shares the same files as your trial edition into a full copy of Office.

You then end up, essentially, with two copies of Office 2010 installed simultaneously.  One of which is activated and called one thing in the Windows registry and another that’s got a different name and that isn’t activated.

So if you find yourself in this position how can you fix it?  The simple option is to remove the parts of Office that are installed but that won’t run.  To do this, go into the Control Panel and open the Programs and Features option.  Find Office 2010 in the list and on the blue toolbar at the top of the windows click the Change button.

This will open a windows giving you the option to Add or Remove Features from Office and you can untick, and uninstall, all of the programs that won’t run.  In this instance Office 2010 Home and Student only includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, so programs such as Outlook, Access and Publisher can be removed.

It’s a frustrating and confusing position for people to be in as not only does it make them think either that the product key they bought was faulty; the software is installed after all so why won’t some of it run.  It is also difficult for a Microsoft support representative over the phone to diagnose.

Hopefully Microsoft will rectify this problem for the next version of Office, due in early 2013.  Until then we’ll have to continue using workarounds.

All it takes is to start up the program as administrator (might not always be necessary) and select the installed Office version from the available choices.

A small popup will then be displayed notifying the user that the licensing information have been removed from the PC system.

Office will automatically ask the user to enter a new product key on the next startup of one of its installed applications.

Removing the Office product key information can be helpful in some situations including virus attacks, corrupt data or if counterfeit software has been purchased (without knowledge of course).

Most users resorted to uninstalling and reinstalling Microsoft Office if they encountered such a situation which is no longer necessary as the Office Key Remover takes care of that issue.

Office Key Remover can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows.

Win Key Finder is but one of the many programs that can display product keys in Windows. It supports all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 98 on including the latest release Windows 7. It furthermore supports Microsoft Office.

The portable software program displays the Windows version, product key, product ID, installed service packs, owner and organization upon startup.

The product key can be copied, saved, printed or encrypted. Another option is to modify the OEM information and to check the activation status of the operating system.

The menu on the left links to displaying product keys for other supported Microsoft products.

WinKeyFinder supports both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system and is one of the fastest most comfortable options to display the operating system’s product key.

A scan of the computer system does not take longer than a few seconds and the discovered serial numbers are listed in the main program window. The software developers maintain a list of all supported applications. Included are programs from Adobe, Macromedia, Ahead and Stardock plus additional software programs like Winamp, VMWare Server or Flashget.

The serial numbers revealer does not support Microsoft applications which surprises because the methods to reveal product keys for Microsoft products is well documented.

The serial numbers that are found by Softkey Revealer can be saved in a text document. Could be handy to print all the serial numbers before migrating to a new operating system or reinstalling the old one.

Instead of searching for the keys in your emails, manuals and recipes you could use another approach. License Crawler is a sweet little application that scans the Windows Registry for Windows product keys and other serial numbers and licenses.

If you want to find the license or find the serial number for a product that you have installed on your system then License Crawler could be your best bet. It is also the optimal solution before installing software on a system.

Say you use Nero regularly and it is causing problems lately. Before uninstalling and installing Nero you should run License Crawler to find the serial of Nero and write it down.

The advantage of License Crawler is its diversity compared to other products that can only reveal Windows product keys. As long as the software is storing its license key in the Registry it will be discovered by the software program.

License Crawler is compatible with most versions of Windows starting with Windows 95 including Windows Vista. It is a portable application that can be run from any location and would be a perfect fit for an USB stick: Thinking tech support here asking the clients to find the serial or license key could end up in frustration. Starting License Crawler instead could reveal it without having to interact with the client at all.

The homepage of License Crawler uses the German language but the software program itself uses English. This is a direct link to the application. Just download, unpack and start.

The terms of use have to be accepted at the beginning. A click on the Start Search button crawls the Windows Registry trying to find serial and license codes. It is possible to change the Registry Hive or search them all but the best results are usually achieved with the default settings.

You do need the product key if you want to reinstall the operating system for instance. You could start searching for the product key or you could simply use the software Produkey to find out and display the product key of the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Exchange Server and several other Microsoft applications.

It is possible to export all product keys in a html file which can then be printed to have the product key available when you reinstall the product again. Copying does not work when installing the operating system, this means that exporting and printing is probably the better solution.

What I like is that you do not have to install the software at all – as usual with Nirsoft applications.

Melanie’s Review

So you’re happily working away on your computer and as if it has a mind of its own it suddenly dies. Maybe you’ll see a blue screen of death, or simply a black screen, or perhaps everything just freezes. The symptoms don’t really matter all that much, the end result is the same. The PC is kaput, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

After a lot of messing around, testing and swapping out components, you decide your hard drive is probably okay, (perhaps it shows up okay on another computer), the power supply is okay too as is the RAM, so it’s likely to be either the processor or motherboard. If the computer is over a couple of years old, perhaps younger in some cases, you’ll find that replacing the motherboard isn’t as easy as you’d think. They don’t sell them anymore, or they’re hard to come by. In any case, if you’re forced into buying a new mobo, you might as well get an upgrade.

A day or two goes by, and you’ve spent your hard earned cash on new parts, and they finally drop through the door. You’ll soon have that computer back up and running in no time. But wait… what were the license keys? Just when you needed it, the original box to your software has magically disappeared almost in spite, and all you can find is your Windows disk and maybe a few pieces of software. You know that the CD in itself will be fairly useless without a valid license key to enter during the install, so again you’re stumped.

Well maybe not. There are a number of pieces of free software out there which enable you to examine your old hard drive, and get the license keys out. There’s “License Finder”, “Windows Product Key Finder”, “Magical Jellybean Finder” (which sounds somewhat odd if you ask me), and perhaps my personal favorite, “ProduKey”.

The nice thing about ProduKey, is that it won’t just find product keys on an already working computer. You can use it to examine hard drives of dead computers too. Obviously if the hard drive itself is fried, you’ll not get much from it, but in our case the hard drive was still working fine, so it should be possible to just plug it into another machine.

So now, your task should be to find another computer, and get your hard drive installed. You can use a laptop if you need to, and plug your drive into a USB caddy or docking station. Once you’ve done that, hopefully you’ll see your old drive appear under a new drive letter. Download and install a copy of ProduKey, and point it towards the windows folder of your hard drive. Cross your fingers and say a few prayers to the computer gods, and hopefully in the next few seconds you’ll see displayed all the keys for your software.

Make a careful note of these, and before you know it, you can reinstall Windows on that old computer without a hitch.

Read More:

ProduKey

Some users had the clever idea to post the complete profile into forums to find some help with a problem they encountered. The problem with this is that the profile also contains the Windows product key which is used to validate the operating system. All that needs to be done is to perform a search on Google with the line “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” “key:” which will list many pages that contain such profiles. Some user blacked out the product key will others simply did not know better than to leave everything as it was.

The KMS works as a activation hub for all computers connected to it which means that all Vista editions can be activated at once using the server. To counter abuse the activation is only valid for 180 days and everything needs to be re-activated in that period. The software, scheduled for release next year, apparently got into wrong hands and “pirates” were able to tweak the Key Management Service that way that it would activate the Vista edition without connecting to the Microsoft Activation server at all.

Everything a Pirate needs is now available freely, though illegally, on the internet. You may download a full retail version of Windows Vista with some CD keys and you may download the Key Management Service to activate the edition without Microsoft ever knowing.

This will only work with Business and Enterprise editions and the time limit is still active. I personally think that it is only a matter of time until those nasty “pirates” create a version that activates Vista completely. Another drawback is that you will still be subject to WGA checks if you use services such as Windows Update to update your operating system. Again, only a matter of time for this as well.

Will Vista be less copied than XP ? I don’t think so. Sure activation and WGA could make this happen but it seems that the “pirates” are on step ahead, again.

WGA is installed using Windows Updates, it copies three files on your system.

\WINDOWS\system32\WgaLogon.dll
\WINDOWS\system32\WgaTray.exe
\WINDOWS\system32\LegitCheckControl.dll

There are reports on the internet that sometimes legit versions of windows xp recieve those popup messages. Microsoft released a program that checks wether your windows xp key is legit or not. You can download the Microsoft Diagnostic Tool from the microsoft homepage.

If you key is not valid you have the following options to fix the problem asap. (Besides calling Microsoft asking what´s wrong of course.):

Option 1. 

Option 2. 

Clear the file C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage\data from all data and make it read only. Restart Your Computer.

Option 3.

If you have another windows xp key (maybe because if your complaint to Microsoft or the retailer that sold you the operating system) you can change the key by using Microsofts Key Update Tool.

Option 4.

There are ways to uninstall the wga files. This is only a temporary solution, next time you run windows update it´s likely to be installed again. (source)
1. run > regedit, search and delete all references to WgaTray.exe

2. start in safemode and remove the infection by deleting the file WgaTray.exe in c:\Windows\System32, placed there by the second greediest Corporatin in the World (Intel honlds the enviable no1 spot). (B. Gates III is best known for spying on his customers.)

3. restart your computer