Help, I want to salvage my hardrive software, os and license keys off broken laptop

Hi guys, I have a dell latitude c840 from 2001 that I just dropped. I can't seem to get it to switch back on. Now I'm not too expectant of a fix for this. I have the vast majority of my important data backed up externally thankfully but another issue for me is all the different software packages and their license keys and I'm also fond of xp. Is there any way I can salvage the hard drive and contents and keep my license keys and os working on a new laptop and what laptops can I shove the c840 one into? Any help, info or advice are all welcome

 

Pull the HDD and use a IDE to USB adapter or external enclosure. License keys are going to be hard to find, and are going to be hidden in some file or registry key that you probably can't read in plain text.

As far as the XP license, if it came with the laptop, then it can't be used on another system.

 

Thanks for the response Lithus, quick too.
Well thats half the battle if I can access the drive. From what I'm reading on different sites, certain programs require a new license key on a new system because each system has a unique code the license key attaches to. For some of the programs at least I have to get back to whoever I purchased the license off for a re-issue. That's a lot of messing I hope to avoid. I think I'll pull the hard drive as suggested and slave it to a pc, or even set it up as the master, that is if I have no other options. When using IDE to USB does it act as an external drive? Can you run software applications on an external drive?

 

You can try using a software utility which will scour your hard drive, OS, and registry looking for and software keys of programs that you might have installed on your computer, including the OS. There was a similar, recent, thread about in this forum about how to recover software keys to which I responded to.

You can try looking for that thread or check out the following link to recover your software keys. Try doing what Lithus recommended about pulling the hard drive and getting it to run externally. Once the HDD is up and running, run the software key recovery program on that hard drive.

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


Here's that other thread at NBR regarding the retrieval of software keys on a system:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=426935

 

That's good stuff, thanks garetjax. It just might do the trick.

 

In my research I found this on Yahoo answers of all places. Guy talking about copying the hard drive image from one laptop hardrive to another through a third surrogate drive. This might be a workaround for my problem.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060829061259AAegANt

Also led me to this handy kit made specifically for that particular task but without the surrogate.
http://www.comptick.com/tryoenhadron.html

What I'll do is pull the drive and use those programs to sift for all the product keys first, just in case and I'll give that kit in the second link a go.

Thanks for all the info and help guys, really appreciate it. I'll let you know how it goes. Be a few days tho. Take it easy

 

Don't you have the installation media? If you do, you could save yourself a lot of trouble.

 

That answer is essentially referring to making an image of the HDD and copying that image onto a new HDD, which is then placed back into the SAME computer.

If you try to put it in a different computer, what you're essentially doing is taking the HDD from the broken laptop, and physically putting it in a new laptop, which is most likely going to cause a BSOD, leaving you at square one.

 

Crap, you're right, it won't work, new laptop wouldn't accept old drive or drive image even. That's a setback. Yeah I have all the installation media, and I found the product key for the xp os but, Lithus, you were saying that a new computer would need a new license key for the os. Do you think Dell would re-issue the license? Or would I be better off just buying xp again? It's obsolete pretty much, so shouldn't be expensive I hope. Also if I do manage to salvage the licenses from the other programs will they be any good on a new system? You see I don't know enough about this stuff, I'm an informed layperson at best.