My colleague, Mike Hansell, has developed another superb utility for the technical people out there:

Complete Keyfinder

The demo lets you view your current windows and office product key. Thats not very different from other keyfinders out there (like magic jellybean).

But the really cool part is that by registering the full version, it will also show your product key (again of windows and office) of any external drive connected to the PC.

Where this is very useful for people like me is: Customer has a failed PC (usually motherboard failure). Customer doesn’t have the original office / windows CD (or didn’t do the “create a recovery disk” when they purchased the PC/laptop… and there is no product key sticker). The hard drive is still in good condition… but how do you get the code from the registry key without the original motherboard?

Well, thats where Complete Keyfinder works its best.

It can automatically detect external drives (so you plug the HDD from the failed PC into a working PC), and Complete Keyfinder will automatically detect the drive, look for the windows registry, and then show your office and windows codes.