Question Retrieve Office 2016 Product Key.

[stchman]

I have a laptop that came pre-installed with Windows 10 and Office 2016. The OS for some reason is essentially unbootable now. I am going to replace the spinning HDD with an SSD as the laptop has always been REALLY slow.

I was able to retreive the Windows 10 product key with the following procedure:

sudo apt install chntpw
To look into the relevant registry file mount the Windows disk and open it like so:
chntpw -e /path/to/windisk/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE
Now to get the decoded DigitalProductId enter this command:
dpi \Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

I am wondering if there is a similar method to retrieve my Office 2016 product key from the messed up HDD.

Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Does it still run?

If so, Belarc Advisor can probably do this.
https://www.belarc.com/products/belarc-advisor

But....

The OS for some reason is essentially unbootable now

This does not bode well.

 

[stchman]

When you try booting the laptop, it sits there for about a 45 minutes just spinning.

 

[johnbl]

well you might be able to connect the drive as a data disk then unhide the registry hives and then use a offline registry editor like
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/offline_registry_view.html
then look directly at the registry location for the info you want.

this would all depend on if the old drive still spins and reads data.
I would look at the drive as a data drive and run crystaldiskinfo.exe and read its smart data from it to see if it can be used.