Recover Office2003 product key from non booting PC?

As the title suggests, I'm working on a non-booting Windows XP Home PC. The owner of the PC has lost the Office install CDs, and (of course) the product key was on the CD case (how people continually manage to lose software that costs over $100 is beyond my comprehension). So, I boot the system to a preinstallation environment (aka PE or PECD like a "Barts CD" or the UBCD4Win), and then I normally use ProduKey, and 99% of the time, it works flawlessly. However, this one time, it is not revealing the Office2003 key. I know Office2003 is installed 'cuz I can see it in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11. All the usual suspects are there: WINWORD.exe, POWERPNT.exe, and the rest of 'em. Is there another "key extractor" for MS Office that works in a preinstallation environment? IIRC, there's one on the UBCD4Win and I haven't tried that one yet..... if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to post...

THX!

(BTW - I'm pretty sure that most of the "key reader" type of programs listed here at MG do NOT run from within a preinstallation environment, but I could be wrong)

 

I have not used this particular program but Hirens Boot CD 14.1 has the program:

ProduKey 1.53 Recovers the lost product key of your Windows/Office.

Here are details of the program.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

 

Yeah, Hiren's is basically "w@r3z", and as I mentioned above ". . . I normally use ProduKey, and 99% of the time . . . "

Thanks tho'

I've tried everything I have, including the UBCD4Win, SIW, and others. SIW did give me a product key for "Microsoft Interactive Training" which I think is part of Office? So, I'll try it, if it doesn't work, oh well. I shouldn't be held responsible for the client losing his expensive software. He also told me yesterday "there's nothing important on the PC, so you can wipe it clean and reload Windows if you need to". Well, I need to! All repair attempts have failed, and it really is not my responsibility to spend hours trying to recover their Office product key.....

 

God, I definitely have to get more sleep. :-o

I think the keyfinder isn't working because when you load UBCD4 windows, it is basically a clean registry. There is a program on UBCD4 windows that loads the registry hives into the registry. Maybe the keyfinder would work then. I am probably wrong but it was just a thought.

The program on the UBCD is EZPCFIX.

http://www.ezpcfix.net/html/documentation.htm

 

Thx, I already tried all that. I loaded the hives, I checked using everything on the UBCD4Win including the "Remote Registry" tool, the 2 or 3 built-in keyviewers, ProduKey (via PE and with the client's HD hooked up via USB to a healthy PC and using the "Select Location" feature in ProduKey), SIW's "Licenses" option, etc, etc, et al. I have since given up, the HD was formatted, clean XP Home was loaded, and I installed Open Office Oxygen instead. As I said above, the client OK'd wiping the drive, but MANY MANY people assume that MS Office is built in to Windows, and after a clean install, I have rec'd MANY calls "where is my Word? Where is Excel?" and I have to explain "you said it was OK to erase everything; yes, 'everything' really does mean 'everything' and I explained to you that 'everything' includes ALL your programs except for the basic Windows apps like Media Player and Internet Explorer, 'everything' also includes ALL your music, pictures, Word files...." and yet, after in depth explanations of the word "everything", I continue to get clients that say "where's my TurboTax stuff" and I'll say "I explained that 'everything' really did mean 'everything' and you not once mentioned a single word about TurboTax" and they always reply with "yeah, but I didn't know that 'everything will be gone forever' really meant that 'e v e r y t h i n g WILL be GONE forever" and all I can respond with is "I explained it slowly, thoroughly, and completely; I asked if you had any questions or concerns; I'm sorry that you misunderstood".
:banghead
Sorry for the psuedo-rant :-o It's been "one of those days" at work and I'm now totally preparing myself for the inevitable call tomorrow: "HEY! Word isn't on here anymore" even though I spent 15-20min explaining all of the above to the client.....

* dlb puts gun to head, but notices a cold beer before pulling the trigger; dlb realizes that cold beer would be better - cold beer saves dlb's life *
J/K LOL