Andy’s Technotes and commentary

The new version of Magic Jellybean Keyfinder 2.0 beta (not 1.5) supposedly allows one to recover the Product Key from a hard drive that is no longer bootable.
The test was done when a 1.5ghz PIV 845 chipset motherboard died. The computer had been running a Nobilis XP Home.

The hard drive would not boot into windows on any of the three new motherboards tried. It would just BSOD briefly and reboot.

Initial tests were done using a Windows 2000 machine as a host. It didn’t work. The host machine OS version must match (at least to some degree) the OS on the drive from which you are attempt to retrieve the key else you get an error something like “Hive Load Failed”. When tested on another XP Home machine the MJBKF worked for installation however activation failed and Microsoft refused to activate the product installation.

Update Jan 19 2007: I found the original key for the install described above and it does not match the keys generated by MJBKF or Dagon. Maybe these guys are not “recovering” the keys but are generating new keys that will allow installation but not activation.

DagonDesign.com has a similar technique for “recovery” of the Product Key. The technique described there created a different Product Key which Microsoft also refused to activate.