Tech tutorials, howtos and walkthroughs

Have you every installed a copy of a Microsoft program but found the program crippled due to your lack of a Product Key to fully activate the product? This must the especially annoying especially if the product is Microsoft Office 2010 and you are pulling one of those College all-nighters with the aim of handing in a seriously overdue paper that is a major part of your grade.

So how does one get the Product Keys? Illegal methods exist but due to the informative nature of this blog, these will not be explored. Rather, I will be explaining the legal methods that exist to get the Product Keys, by the use of a simple analogy.

If one owns a Motor Vehicle, from time to time you may lose the keys to your Motor Vehicles.

 Tough isn’t it?

If you are one of those “always prepared” types, you may have a spare key in your wallet and so your episode of being locked out of your vehicle and looking like a thief trying to car-jack your own ride will not last long.

But for those of us not so prepared, the only resort may be to call your Auto Insurance company, which may have Driver Assist support that will come to your location and assist you with opening the vehicle with a copy of the Vehicle Keys that they have on file via you Blackberry app, as is the case with ICWI (Insurance Company of the West Indies) as in Roger’s article  ICWI Jamaica Launches Accident Alert BlackBerry App .

Or if you were not so clever in your choice of Auto Insurance to have chosen ICWI, you may opt to just call a handy locksmith!

But it is these last resort options that are of importance here. It indicates that you may not have the Motor Vehicle key, so you resort to assistance from external help to either:

  • Provide a copy of the Keys to open and unlock you vehicle doors as in the case of calling ICWI
  • Provide a means that can allow you to access the vehicle without using the Motor Vehicle Keys, that being the Locksmith
more on Geezam.com:  How Schneider Electric can help you company to reduce Third Party Carbon Emissions

Both are legal means of accessing you vehicle and interestingly, the same concept also applies to Software as well. Yes folks, there IS software that can legally recover your Product Keys and allow you to unlock the Software’s full potential, especially when your grade for the Semester is on the line!

And yes, these software programs, three (3) to be exact, are available for download, with two (2) being freeware and one (1) industrial strength Product Key recovery program that you may have to use your Scotia VISA Debit Card to purchase as suggested in my article ScotiaBank’s VISA Debit Card – Jamaica’s Online E-Commerce Renaissance

The first product is called Produkey and is made by a developer called Nirsoft. Easily downloaded and installed with instructions on their helpful website, it also has a family of other products that you may also want to try out. Once you have the software running it shows you all the installed Microsoft Windows programs and the Product Keys for them all.

Nice trick huh?

Next up is my personal favourite which I actually use a lot, the Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder. Akin to its rival Produkey from Nirsoft, it too is a freeware that also recovers Product Keys from installed Windows programs and thus allows you to use the Product Keys to activate the program and thus allow its full features.

But my all time favourite has got to be Recover Keys. This one is not free but at US$24.95, it will be the best thing you ever purchased with your Scotia VISA Debit Card online. Once in your hands, the power to recover the Product Keys of up to three thousand program, both Microsoft and non-Microsoft will be at your beck and call.

There is even a version for recovering product keys installed on Apple Mac’s operating SYSTEM i.e. OS 10.1 aka “Lion” called Mac Product Key Finder….as if you Mac Users ever have that problem with software!! And yes (I do so tire of the exclamations of glee!!), like its sister the Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder it is freeware!

more on Geezam.com:  Blue Origin breaks records as Captain Kirk goes into space

Bye-bye nag screen and prompts that say “You have 2 days to activate….”, as these above mentioned software products provide a means of legally activating software products. It extracts the Product Keys for the hive files that store them while installed on your computer.

As an added bonus, once you recover the Product Key for Office 2010 and unlock its full potential, you can change the Product Key to something you can remember! Here is the lowdown, again perfectly legit:

  1. Open any Microsoft Office 2010 program such as Microsoft Word.
  2. Go to File > Help and from the screen displayed, click “Change Product key” link on right side.
  3. In the new screen pop-up, enter a new 25 character product key and click Continue button.
  4. Then you can click either on “Install now” or “Customize” buttons.

These Product Key Recovery programs are legal on the presumption that you had LEGALLY installed the Microsoft Windows software but had lost the Product Key due to a lack of the OEM (Original Equiptment Manufacturer’s) disc information or the need to reinstall the Program after you Operating system had failed, most commonly referred to as “my Harddrive crashed?”

So they you have it folks!! You can follow the White Rabbit as shown above and stop worrying about you Microsoft Office 2010 not being able to work properly for only US$24.95. Best and first thing to spend you Scotia VISA Debit Card purchasing!!

Here’s the Links for the programs listed above:

ProduKey

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

Magic Jelly Bean KeyFinder

http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Recover Keys

http://recover-keys.com/

Mac Product Key Finder

http://mac-product-key-finder.com/

About the Author

Read more on Geezam.com

One response to “How to Legally Activate installed Microsoft Products – Office 2010’s in the Lost and Found”

  1. Looking how to accomplish this for OS software as well that I have legal ownership of, but somehow have lost the product key…Windows Server 2008.