I have a friend who needs to reinstall windows, but he can't find his VS2008 activation code/product key. Is there a way to look up which product key he entered when he last installed VS2008 in the registry? Any other method of finding the key is also welcome.
+2
A:
There seems to be some info on viewing/setting your VS product key here.
ryeguy
2009-02-09 17:26:09
That does offer some useful information about changing the key your installer uses to install, if you have a disk with the product key baked in, but it DOESN'T answer the original question.
Tim Keating
2010-06-18 05:06:01
Indeed this does not answer the original question.
Zitrax
2010-06-29 15:27:36
A:
Use this tool to identify all the Microsoft keys installed on a machine
http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/
Hope this helps....
Balaji
2009-09-10 04:18:17
A:
For Visual Studio 2005:
If you do have an installed Visual Studio 2005 however, and want to find out the serial number you’ve used to install it because you don’t have a clue where you put that shiny sticker, you can. It is, like most things in Windows, in the registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Registration\PIDKEY
In order to convert the value in that key to an actual serial number you have to put a dash ( – ) after evert 5 characters of the code.
From: http://www.gooli.org/blog/visual-studio-2005-serial-number/
For Visual Studio 2008 it's supposed to be:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Registration\PIDKEY
However I noted that the the Data field for PIDKEY is only filled in the 1000.0x000 sub folder of the above paths.
Zitrax
2010-06-29 15:20:30