Pulling a Vista CD Key off Vista??

I was working on a laptop with a broken LCD to find that the wires inside are completely trashed and except sending it into Toshiba (no warranty) to be repaired (which would be several hundred $$) I offered to take the laptop off his hands for $100.

Well. This laptop came with XP Media 2005 but he upgraded to Vista and does not have the packing that came with the CD anymore.

It's still installed and I want to reformat as it was for his daughter and its full of absolute junk and spyware (mouse cursors and flashy BS all over the place). Going to just use an external monitor for it and find a use for it. Otherwise I'll just part it out.

Any possible way to get the cd key via the OS? Is it stored anywhere?

Thanks, ps2cho

ya should be... http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml

as long as you can hook a monitor to the laptop boot up and run that program.

nd4spdbh2 said:

ya should be... http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml

as long as you can hook a monitor to the laptop boot up and run that program.

Click to expand...

wow can I ask for any better LOL!!

When I hook up an LCD later in the week (I want to pay him first before I start anything) that should be attainable with no problems.

Thanks!

EDIT: Hmm interesting. Just tried it on my laptop and the key shown is different from the product key on the bottom of the laptop??
EDIT2: Ahhh Good ol "RTFM"

Q: Why doesn't the product key returned match the one on my sticker?
If you purchased your PC with Windows already installed from a large manufacturer such as Dell or HP, it's likely that Windows was installed using an OEM key instead of the actual key for your PC. This saves them (and you) money because it's much more efficient for these large companies to install Windows once and then clone the drive.

Click to expand...

ps2cho said:

wow can I ask for any better LOL!!

When I hook up an LCD later in the week (I want to pay him first before I start anything) that should be attainable with no problems.

Thanks!

EDIT: Hmm interesting. Just tried it on my laptop and the key shown is different from the product key on the bottom of the laptop??
EDIT2: Ahhh Good ol "RTFM"

Click to expand...

yup... 90% of the time the sticker on the side of OEM computers is an unused OEM cd key... hence the reason all my computers that rnt my main rig are running OEM versions of windows (IE server, backup, htpc )

as said the key is in the recovery disks, basically what many refer to as a "corprate" edition / license.

Use Belarc and it will give you a list of installed software and serial numbers.

nd4spdbh2 said:

ya should be... http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml

as long as you can hook a monitor to the laptop boot up and run that program.

Click to expand...

As soon as I saw the title, I was going to say the exact same thing haha...