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At my place of work, we have been given 80 computers from a company we bought out

Now these computers have office etc installed but when inventorying them, we discovered we have no literature on them about license's, serial codes etc

Is there a good piece of software which can do this, ideally over the network

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    This question will remain on SU since it has already receive a few decent answers, althought it would also be valid for SF.
    – BinaryMisfit
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 10:53
  • I think it's better suited for SU. He's already gotten quite a few responses.
    – alex
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 11:16
  • I was gonna post of SF but i've been using SU for a bit and the people seem better suited for this question
    – admintech
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 12:28

4 Answers 4

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WinKeyFinder does the job.

Features:

  • View Windows XP CD Key
  • Change Windows XP CD Key
  • View Windows Vista 32bit Edition CD Key
  • View MS Office 2007 CD Key
  • View/Change XP Key
  • View/Change MS office Key
  • View Win98 Key
  • View Win2000 Key
  • View .Net Key
  • View Windows2003 Key
  • Back up WinXP Activation
  • Restore WinXP Activation
  • Change / copy Volume Serial number.
  • Save Your Product Key By Encrypting It
  • Generate Unique Passwords By Entering your Combination of KeyCode

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WinKeyFinder is free and portable.

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Try using Magical Jelly Bean keyfinder. It should help you find the PC licenses. Here's a bit of information on the app, from the creators website:

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware open source utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows from your registry. It allows you to print or save your keys for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 family of products. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.

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Unfortunately, unless you have license documentation microsofts point of view will be that you're not licensed regardless of what codes you have.

This page gives relevant information

http://www.microsoft.com/howtotell/content.aspx?pg=faq&displaylang=en

Generally unless you have the certificate or some sort of evidence of a license transfer you don't have a license.

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  • Is there documentation to back this up?
    – pave
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 11:03
  • Nope.
    – alex
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 11:15
  • This is correct and should have been handled as part of 'Due Diligence' when buying out a company and transferring its assets to yourself. During an external audit you will need to provide proof of purchase, certificate of authenticity and a valid code. As we all know, valid codes are 10-a-penny on t'internet, as so do 'they'
    – Szetak
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 12:50
  • +1. Product keys are the technical side of license enforcement but they can be worked around and will not convince an organisation like the BSA if they check you out (even WGA/OGA is not enough). Without the legal side of actual inventoried licenses you have no guarantee that the previous company didn't just rip the software off. Best reinstall under your own volume licensing, or else replace with alternatives.
    – bobince
    Commented Sep 18, 2009 at 12:59
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See this article : "Top 13 Free Product Key Finder Programs".
One or more of them should answer all your needs.

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