This highlights one use for tools to backup and restore Windows activation information. Windows users who buy pre-build computers have another. They often get a pre-activated version of the operating system when they buy the PC from a major manufacturer. They can reinstall Windows on the computer without activation if they use the supplied media or recovery partition. This is however not always possible. To avoid hassles like having to call OEM support or Microsoft to sort out the issues, one could simply backup the activation information before the re-installation, and restore the information after the system has been installed from scratch on the same computer.

Two programs are available that can backup the required files and information.

ABR (Activation Backup and Restore), has been designed for Windows Vista. A beta version of the program for Windows 7 has been created by its developer. The program is fully portable but needs to be executed while Windows is running.

Run activation_backup.exe whenever you want to backup the information, and activation_restore.exe whenever you want to restore the information again on the system. The program does not appear to be working properly on 64-bit editions of Windows 7. While it was able to save the product key to the file, it failed to save the certificate to the program directory as well.

The second program has been designed specifically for Windows 7. 7Tokens Manager – The Activation Backup Solution is a free program that is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows 7 operating system.

Just run the portable program after unpacking. It displays three options which are all pre-selected. It can backup tokens, the product key and the certificate. It will also display if the system is a 32-bit or 64-bit system in the interface.

A click on Backup saves the data in a backup folder in the program directory. To restore the data at a later time, run 7Tokens Manager on the newly installed system and select Restore instead of Backup there. This saves the files and information to the system so that Windows 7 turns into an activated system afterwards.

7Tokens Manager is the ideal program for Windows 7 users, while Vista users should use ABR instead. Both programs are portable and fit nicely on a removable drive.

Both programs have been scanned at Virustotal and both turned out to be clean. Well, 7Tokens Manager returned 0 of 42 which means that no virus engine has detected malicious data. ABR showed 1 out of 42 with the likelihood of a false positive.

7Tokens Manager can be downloaded from the MyDigitalLife forum, ABR from the developer website. (Inspiration taken from Caschy)

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.

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.