Find Serial Keys and Installation Codes for Software Share Pin Email Print William Andrew/Getty Images. Serial keys for software programs. Product key finder programs are software tools that automatically search your computer for the serial keys stored in the Windows Registry or elsewhere on your computer. An avast license key will work in any older version including 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 8, 7, 6, 5 or v4.8. The registration and continuation process was a bit different in the past. The registration and continuation process was a bit different in the past.

1. Pc License Key

There are many backup software on the market and some of them does a really good job in making sure that there is an exact copy of the important files available at the backup drive. Although backing up of files is important, many people forget to backup the Windows product key or third party software license that is installed on their computer. When their computer crashes and had to reinstall everything from scratch, they had to go through the trouble of searching for the license number to activate the software that they’ve purchased. If the license key are misplaced and forgotten, they’d have to contact the software support team and provide them with proof of purchase so that they can reissue the license.

The problem is software licenses aren’t stored in one standard location where you can just copy the whole folder to backup and then paste it back to reactivate all the software. They are stored all over the place either in a form of an external file or a registry key. Fortunately we found 10 software that can scan your computer and recover the lost or forgotten product key licenses so you can back it up in case you need to reactivate them again. Computer technicians can also use these software to help customers recover their software license numbers from non-bootable drive.

1. LicenseCrawler

LicenseCrawler is a portable license recovery tool that is free for private use. It scans the registry area on local and remote computers located at the same network for available serial numbers for Windows, Office and third party applications. The amount of software license that LicenseCrawler can detect is unknown because there is no such information being published at their website or program. Since it is free, you can run it and cross check if it is able to reveal the license for the shareware installed on your computer. Works on all versions of Windows including both 32-bit and 64-bit.

Download LicenseCrawler

2. MSKeyViewer Plus

MSKeyViewer Plus is free and portable. Although the name of this tool sounded like it can only view Microsoft key, but it also support Office and third party applications as well. To view the supported applications, run the program, click the About button and followed by clicking the Supported Products button. The list of supported product seems a bit outdated because this program itself was last updated nearly 2 years ago.

Download MSKeyViewer Plus

3. Product Key Finder

Product Key Finder is free but take note of the adware installation when installing this program. It is a very simple program that claims to support over 200 programs but without a detailed listings. Running the program will instantly list all the license number and allows you to backup to a CSV file by clicking the Save button. Only support 32-bit Windows operating system.

Download Product Key Finder

4. Softkey Revealer

Softkey Revealer is free and portable program that is able to support retrieving licenses from a huge list of software which can be found on this page. Other than just depending on the signature that they created, it also seems to list keys with the value username, password, user and etc. The program is very small in size at only 200KB in size and even comes with additional tools to decrypt Adobe encrypted key, removing content advisor password and changing the current Windows key.

Download Softkey Revealer

5. Keyfinder Thing

Keyfinder Thing is probably one of the most popular free tool to help you recover product keys from your computer. It supports a total of 90 software titles which can be viewed from the View > Software List. You can save the results from the File menu. Take note of the installation of adware during setup.

Download Keyfinder Thing

6. Magic Keyfinder 2012

Magic Keyfinder 2012 is actually a shareware but the you can use it for free with a huge limitation where only the first 10 digits of the supported product keys are displayed. The actual amount of supported software are unknown. Other than using their database signature, you can also use the deep scan where it detects a certain keywords and determine that it is a possible license key. During testing, only 5 digits from our Windows 7 product keys are being displayed.

Download Magic Keyfinder 2012

7. Product Key Viewer

Product Key Viewer is a shareware that supports retrieving license key over 1000 applications from your computer. Only the Pro and Tech version will report activation keys for third party applications. The Lite version will only locate the Windows and Office product keys. You can test Product Key Viewer to identify what software is being identified on your computer for free except the data are being partially hidden.

Download Product Key Viewer

8. Product Key Finder by Top Password

The name of this software is exactly the same as the one listed under number 3 except this is a shareware that cost $17.95 and developed under a different company called Top Password. The amount of supported software is unknown but the official webpage did mention Windows, Office, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Visual Studio, VMWare, Adobe and many other products. The results are displayed instantly upon scanning. It supports scanning the current system, remote system or even on non-booting systems. Works on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

Download Product Key Finder by Top Password

9. Product Key Explorer

Product Key Explorer is a shareware that cost $29.50 that supports more than 4000 software and games as well. You can view the complete list of supported products at this page. You can scan both local and remote computers with the built-in option to use a different login credentials. The results can be saved to an external file or a registry file.

Download Product Key Explorer

Pc License Key

10. Recover Keys

Recover Keys is developed by the same company as KeyFinder Thing except that this is their shareware version that supports over 3000 software titles including games. It cost $24.95 to unlock the program or else it will only show the first 4 characters of the license number. It also comes with advanced features to scan multiple computers through IP range or manually selecting the computers that is available on the network.

Download Recover Keys

Editor’s Note: After testing the 10 product key recovery software above, the software that stood out in the tests are LicenseCrawler and Recover Keys. Both of this tool managed to retrieve additional licenses that weren’t detected on the other 8. Although some of the software claims to support recovering license keys from more than a few thousands software, it is possible that the software installed on your computer is not in the list. You can definitely make a request by contact them to include it in their database.

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just found out keyGetter was one of the best websites for licence

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Belarc Advisor – try this software ,it is absolutely free and you can easly get your system details including windows key !!!!!!!!

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“Editor’s Note: After testing the 10 product key recovery software above, the software that stood out in the tests are LicenseCrawler and Recover Key”

I tried those two programs.
The presentation of the results is 10 times better in ‘Recover Key’, so I purchased that.
(BitsDuJour is selling it at 40% off for the next 2 hours)

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Dear sir, I have forgotten my software’s last 5digit Serial number. How could i recover those 5 digit serial right now i have the remaining serial number. Software Name is Vakia from ICS products Salem
kindly needful your honor response, Thanking you

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SterJo Key Finder is better and it reveals lots of keys. Also its free unlike some of those mention here.
Here is the link of the website: sterjosoft.com

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thanks!!

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thank you so much for your help. the keyfinder software really works!! =)

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i like this website… :)

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thank you

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thanks a lot

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man. u rock! thanks for that!! :)

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Great small app! I’ll add it to my Great Software List soon.
Thanks!

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This tool is pretty handy if one needed to reformat their PCs incase of things might go wrong. Anyway, good post.. Keep it up! Regards.

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While this is a useful utility, it will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s take on it is.

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A product key, also known as a software key, is a specific software-based key for a computer program. It certifies that the copy of the program is original. Activation is sometimes done offline by entering the key, or with software like Windows 8.1, online activation is required to prevent multiple people using the same key. Not all software has a product key, as some publishers may choose to use a different method to protect their copyright, or in some cases, such as free or open source software, copyright protection is not used.

Computer games use product keys to verify that the game has not been copied without authorization. Likewise, one is not allowed to play online with two identical product keys at the same time.

Product keys consist of a series of numbers and/or letters. This sequence is typically entered by the user during the installation of computer software, and is then passed to a verification function in the program. This function manipulates the key sequence according to a mathematical algorithm and attempts to match the results to a set of valid solutions.

• 2Controversy

Effectiveness[edit]

Standard key generation, where product keys are generated mathematically, is not completely effective in stopping copyright infringement of software, as these keys can be distributed. The overall effectiveness of product keys in enforcing software copyrights requires further study. In addition, with improved communication from the rise of the Internet, more sophisticated attacks on keys such as cracks (removing the need for a key) and product key generators have become common.

Because of this, software publishers are increasingly turning to alternative methods of verifying that keys are both valid and uncompromised. One method, product validation, assigns a product key based on a unique feature of the purchaser's computer hardware (such as its MAC address), which cannot be as easily duplicated since it depends on the user's hardware. Other newer methods may involve requiring periodical validation of the CD key with an internet server (for games with an online component, this is done whenever the user signs in). The validation can then be performed on the server side, preventing cracks tampering with it (as they do on the client side). The server can also keep a blacklist of all CD keys known to be invalid or which have explicitly been banned, and deny them access.

Controversy[edit]

Some of the most effective CD key protection is very controversial, due to inconvenience, strict enforcement, harsh penalties and, in some cases, false positives. CD key protection has been linked to Digital Rights Management,^{[by whom?]} in that it uses uncompromising digital procedures to enforce the license agreement.

Inconvenience[edit]

Product keys are somewhat inconvenient for end users. Not only do they need to be entered whenever a program is installed, but the user must also be sure not to lose them. Loss of a product key usually means the software is useless once uninstalled.

Product keys also present new ways for distribution to go wrong. If a product is shipped with missing or invalid keys, then the CD itself is useless. For example, all copies of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow originally shipped to Australia without CD keys.^[1]

Enforcement and penalties[edit]

There are many cases of permanent bans enforced by companies detecting usage violations. It is common for an online system to immediately blacklist a CD key caught running cracks or, in some cases, cheats. This results in a permanent ban. Players who wish to continue use of the software must repurchase it. This has inevitably led to criticism over the motivations of enforcing permanent bans.^{[citation needed]}

Particularly controversial is the situation which arises when multiple products' keys are bound together. If products have dependencies on other products (as is the case with expansion packs), it is common for companies to ban all bound products. For example, if a fake CD key is used with an expansion pack, the server may ban legitimate CD keys from the original game. Similarly, with Valve's Steam service, all products the user has purchased are bound into the one account. If this account is banned, every product will be banned from online play.^[2]

This 'multi-ban' is highly controversial, since it bans users from products which they have legitimately purchased and used.^{[citation needed]}

False positives[edit]

Bans are enforced by servers immediately upon detection of cracks or cheats, usually without human intervention. Sometimes, legitimate users are wrongly deemed in violation of the license, and banned. In large cases of false positives, they are sometimes corrected (as happened in World of Warcraft.^[3]) However, individual cases may not be given any attention.^{[citation needed]}

A common cause of false positives (as with the World of Warcraft case above) is users of unsupported platforms. For example, users of Linux can run Windows applications through compatibility layers such as Wine and Cedega. This software combination sometimes triggers the game's server anti-cheating software, resulting in a ban due to Wine or Cedega being a Windows API compatibility layer for Linux, so it is considered third-party (cheating) software by the game's server.^{[4][citation needed]}

Recovery of keys[edit]

A key recovery program is a program that is designed to read and decrypt and/or de-obfuscate the key to its original state. When the key is returned to its original state, it may be used to reinstall its corresponding software.^[5]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Australian Pandora Tomorrow CD-Key ProblemsShack News
2. ^'Valve suspends 20,000 Steam accounts'. GameSpot. Retrieved 2013-05-15.
3. ^Blizzard Unbans Linux World of Warcraft PlayersSoftpedia
4. ^Linux users banned from Diablo 3- End Gamers
5. ^http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html