Recover Windows Product Key from External or Unbootable Drive

Want to find Windows product key or recover forgotten Windows 10 password? Learn how to recover Windows product key from an external or unbootable drive.

Need to reload the operating system but you’ve lost the product key for Microsoft Office 2016 installed on your computer? Is it possible to retrieve Windows 10 product key off of my old computer’s external hard drive?

Even, if your computer is broken or unbootable, you can try to recover your Windows product key and reinstall the OS.

To find your Windows product key, it is recommended to use Password Recovery Bundle which is a must-have password recovery tool that could bypass Windows password, retrieve forgotten passwords to your database, email accounts or protected Office/PDF documents, find lost product keys for any Windows PC, and much more.

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In this Windows product key recovery tutorial, we’ll show you how to use Password Recovery Bundle to recover Windows 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista / XP product key from an external or unbootable drive. Here we go.

How to Recover Windows 10 Product Key from External Drive

In order to view the product keys stored on a broken computer, you can unplug the hard drive and then connect it to a working computer as an external drive. Afterward, follow the steps below to recover Windows product key:

Step (1): First of all, open up the Password Recovery Bundle. Click on Start Recovery button and you’ll get a list of options to recover various passwords, along with two additional options to recover product key:

Product Key – This lets you retrieve product keys from your current Windows installation.

Product Key (Advanced) – This can recover product keys from unbootable Windows installation on an external hard drive.

Obviously, here we have to choose the “Product Key (Advanced)” option in order to recover Windows product key from external hard drive.

Step (2): When you see the following dialog box, browse to choose the SOFTWARE registry file stored in the external hard drive. By default, the SOFTWARE file is located in the directory /Windows/System32/Config.

find windows product key

Step (3): Once you’ve clicked the OK button, the Windows product key finder software will load the selected registry file and then immediately show product keys for Windows, Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Adobe and many other programs you’ve ever installed.

This is how you can easily find Windows product key from external hard drive. The retrieving method will be the same for all the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

How to Recover Windows 10 Product Key from Unbootable Drive

How can I find Windows product key on a crashed or unbootable computer? If you’re unable to connect its drive to a working PC, the only solution is to boot your crashed computer from a bootable media (CD, USB, etc.) and run a product key finder utility from there.

Thankfully, Password Recovery Bundle allows you to create a bootable CD or USB drive, so you can easily extract lost product keys from unbootable drive. Here’s how to do so:

Step (1): When you launch Password Recovery Bundle, click on Windows Password button and choose “Create Password Reset Bootable Disk” from the drop-down menu that appears.

windows product key finder

Step (2): By default, the built-in ISO image is filled in automatically. You just need to choose a target media (CD or a USB) and then click on the Start Burn to make a bootable media.

recover windows product key from external hard drive

Step (3): When the bootable media is ready, connect it to your unbootable computer. Turn on the machine and quickly press a dedicated key (F12, F2, DEL, F8, Esc, etc.) to bring up the boot options menu. Choose the bootable media you created and press Enter.

Step (4): When successfully booting off the CD or USB drive, you’ll reach the PCUnlocker screen. Just skip the Windows password reset feature and proceed to click the Options button at the bottom, then click “Find Product Key” option.

recover windows product key from unbootable drive

Step (5): Now you’ll see a new window popping up with your Windows product key, as well as license keys of other programs extracted from your unbootable drive. Finally, you can click the Save button to export the product keys to a text file and then save it to your USB drive.

find product key in windows 7

Thus, you can see how simple is to recover Windows 10 product key or the product key for other software from an unbootable hard drive.

Conclusion

Keeping track of all your software product keys can be a pain, especially when your computer is unbootable or broken. Password Recovery Bundle makes it easy to recover Windows product key from an external or unbootable drive, without having to tear your hair. Try the software to get your product key before it’s too late!

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