Vista Serial Question

Is there somewhere in Vista that I can find the registered serial number of that installation, the one thats on the sticker underneath?

 

Right click on Computer and click properties.

Now scroll down. Under Windows Activation, you should find your product key.

 

hi. hrm i really like


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

it works like a charm.

 

Im looking for the letters/numbers combination. Its 5 grpoups of numbers/letters.

 

The magical jellybean might work for you. You could also try ABR (find that at the bottom of the Vista clean install guide in my sig), which will backup the key to a file, and if you have an OEM factory install of vista, will also backup your activation.

 

Um, I tried the keyfinder program, and Mcaffee came up and yelled at me because it tried to install some other stuff.....DON'T GO NEAR IT. Luckily, Mcaffee found all of it and deleted all of it before it hit my system.

 

MagicJellyBean is NOT a bad program. It contains NO spyware, malware, or viruses. It's been around for years. I've used it for years.

My point is don't believe everything your antivirus program tells you! Check it out for yourself. Just because a program is polling the system and/or registry doesn't make it bad.

It's a false positive or just plain poor call on McAfee's part.

 

If you are thinking of reinstalling, then you don’t need a serial number with the DELL OEM disk. Otherwise (with a retail disk) you can use the number on the sticker underneath your notebook, but you might have to call MS to activate it (automatic online activation doesn’t work, but manual activation does).

 

When you use jellybean to find out the OEM key, it doesn't really matter whether it is a malware or not, as you are going to reformat the hard drive and have a new windows installation anyway.

 

You're better off using ABR and you can skip activation altogether. You can find it in my clean install guide (in my sig).

 

Got my answer... The last five of your product ID under start/control panel/system will match the last 5 of the product ID on the sticker. I was looking for someway to verify by finding the long activation sequence inside the system but this will suffice.

Someone is always throwing little tests out..