Hi Everyone,

The seems to be some confusion in reference to the character string found in
the "Registered to:" section on the General tab of System Properties. The 20
characters there is the operating system Product Identification (PID). It is
not the "Product Key" which contains 25 characters. The product key is on
the installed system, but not easily found. For a factory installation it is
on the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) label which should be affixed to
the body of the PC. For retail and OEM versions, the COA is included with
the installation CD.

If, for some reason, you need to get a product key from a Windows
installation, an easy way is to run the BeLarc Advisor. It's a free personal
PC audit and it will build a detailed profile of your installed software and
hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your
browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and
is not sent to any Web server. You can download it here:
http://www.belarc.com/Download.html.

Other related sites that may be of interest:

Determining Windows Version
http://www.computerhope.com/whow.htm

Windows 9x Versions
http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/win95ver.htm

Piracy - How To Tell
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/howtotell/ww/default.mspx

Sven Swanson, Sr.

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