Mislaid CD key - need to know if/where registry would have it

Hi folks,

Before we go any further, PLEASE would people reading this take note:

I OWN THE SOFTWARE LEGALLY.

I DON'T WANT SOMEONE TO GIVE ME A KEY.

I DON'T WANT TO DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL.

Okay, now that we stop people posting silly things about being illegal (hopefully! ) this is my problem:

I desperately need to get my Lotus SmartSuite 97 running again on my laptop. Unfortunately, search as I will, I can't find where I put my key. I have just about turned our house upside down looking for it.

I have tried looking in the registry to see if I can find it but so far haven't succeeded. It may not be there because ages ago when my 98SE laptop got into a dreadful knot (the subject of one of my very early posts) a techo got it up and running by removing a file (something like win.exe) and this made it possible to reinstall Windows over the top of the existing installation. There are still references to Lotus in the registry, so I assume that the registry wasn't completely overwritten but Lotus is only a partially working entity at this stage, highly upset over being unable to find this dll and that dll.

There are a few possibilities I can see to get me out of my hole.

Does someone know the exact path I should follow to find the key? (It's possible that the old Pentium 100Mhz that I was going to wipe and set up as a firewall may have had this software on it and would, if so, still have the key.)

Does any know of a program I can use even just for a few uses that is like the planner in Lotus Organiser? Even if I can't save my work, screenshots of the results would let me do what I need to do.

Is someone able to give me .reg files to merge into the registry that will get my install working again? As I said before, the version is a full version '97 that I got sent to replace my '96 disk that wouldn't install. I wasn't sent all the books and things again, just the disk and paperwork. I can't find it in Add/Remove Programs and I can't find any repair option.

Thanks in advance.

 

Oops, didn't see Lotus in there, sorry.

 

adrynalyn is the reg expert on here and he should be back on line soon

there are programs that can search your reg for keys but i am not sure if they are legal so i will refrain from naming them.

 

Actually, Majorgeeks member Matt.Chugg has made one that's listed in the download section.

It's called keyfinder thing. Not sure if it will find the key for lotus or not, but he is always looking to add new products to his supported list.

 

Being thats its something that ancient, and being under Win 98...

Not sure you will be able to find such a thing. Ive never manually pulled prouct keys from the registry, but my throughts on it that they wouldnt be plain text anyway.

http://majorgeeks.com/google_search.html?domains=MajorGeeks.com&q=key+finder&sitesearch=MajorGeeks.com&client=pub-6960825562757852&forid=1&channel=6517887233&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23003300%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23665522%3BVLC%3A78B749%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3Acccc99%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A11593C%3BLC%3A11593C%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A940F04%3BGIMP%3A940F04%3BLH%3A0%3BLW%3A0%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fmajorgeeks.com%2FEric%2F404.gif%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fmajorgeeks.com%3BLP%3A1%3BFORID%3A11&hl=en

Worth a shot maybe.

 

thanks MM i did want to tread on any body's toes by posting something naughty it's good to know about that one from MATT.

 

Just a thought, have you tried to install and run "Belarc", under Software versions section there are key codes listed for apps I have on my computer ???