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Find Windows XP Product Key From Your Installation CD [How To]

by | Wednesday, 25th Jun 2008 | 419 Comments | Share

Have you lost your Windows CD Key and are desperately looking for it? No backups, nothing. What do you do now? Well till you have your Original installation you can easily find the Product key without breaking a sweat.

Here are the simple steps you need to perform in order to get your Product Key from the installation CD.

(Note: This may only work for certain OEM CDs, if it does not work for you, you can check out our earlier post on how you can find your Windows XP Product key.)

  1. Insert the Installation CD into your CD / Drive Drive.
  2. Explore the CD and navigate to the i386 folder.
  3. Open the file UNATTEND.txt and scroll down to the last line.
  4. You will find your Windows XP Product key there.

We were able to find the CD key on a Windows XP Corporate Edition installation CD and would love to know if you were able to find it on your own installation CDs. Do let us know through your comments on how it went for you.

Via: [Cool Tech Tips]

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I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website.I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.

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  1. jiexi luan on June 29th, 2009 at 7:52 pm #

    lmao it worked. it seems to be just coincidence that it worked since others complain that it isnt working. w/e. your best chances are getting a keygen at that point. but it DOES WORK for me

  2. sundar on July 1st, 2009 at 4:39 am #

    I FOUND THE CD KEY IN MY XP INSTALLATION DISC BUT THE CD KEY IS SAME IN ALL OTHER XP INSTALLATION CDS IGOT FROM MY FRIENDS ……………..U CAN FIND THE CD KEYS ONLY IN THE OEM INSTALLATION DISCS AND NOT IN OTHERS
    THE UNATTENDED .TXT FILE IS USED TO INSTALL THE XP UNATTENDED IF ITS AN OEM THEN THE MANFACTURER WILL PUT THE CD KEY INSIDE …OTHERWISE THERE WILL BE KEY THAT IS SAME ON ALL THE CDS.THATS THE DEFAULT KEY FOR THE USERS TO UNDERSTAND WHERE TO PUT THEIR CD KEY TO AUTOMATE THEIR INSTALLATION………………………………………………………………………………………………

  3. James Craig on July 4th, 2009 at 3:35 pm #

    I found the key for my XPP. Knew there had to be a way.

  4. James Craig on July 4th, 2009 at 4:43 pm #

    same as the other people are geting and it doesn’t work.
    JJWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD
    Oh Well.

  5. Lyn on July 15th, 2009 at 10:03 am #

    How do you change your folder settings to view the hidden files such as the winnt.sif that i have seen work for others?

  6. Lyn on July 15th, 2009 at 10:22 am #

    nevermind, i figured out how to change folder options, now where is that winnt.sif file?

  7. Dinesh on July 21st, 2009 at 3:16 am #

    WINNT.SIF worked for me. Thanks for the post.

  8. Hanzzo Superb on July 21st, 2009 at 7:11 am #

    Thanx…your step works very well…

  9. Gabriel Wu on July 23rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm #

    yes i’m installing a windows xp professional edition and the product key I got in unattend.txt was the same as cankarales’s – JWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD8.

    no winnt.sif either. only txtsetup.sif.

  10. max on August 5th, 2009 at 11:04 pm #

    got the same key as others on my XP Pro retail & XP Home OEM on the unattend.txt file:

    “JJWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD8″

    and no winnt.sif either. any other solutions?

  11. trioproductsint on August 14th, 2009 at 3:36 am #

    key from Eamon (RYQYT-JC2JX-8DMB6-2FX29-P849B) worked for me!! Thanks
    Here are the ones I found on my cd’s (didn’t work for me):
    CD87T-HFP4C-V7X7H-8VY68-W7D7M
    JJWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD8
    Doesn’t hurt to try…keep posting them numbers!

    • eek on February 18th, 2010 at 7:08 pm #

      it worked for a winxp ome cd with february 2010 updates

    • Shach on August 19th, 2010 at 1:34 pm #

      All solutions suggested so far didn’t work for me.

  12. tendyfish on August 23rd, 2009 at 11:37 am #

    It worked wonders for me….thnx a million!

  13. D on August 24th, 2009 at 1:31 pm #

    Amazing man worked on mine too, nice stuff thank you brother

  14. Luigi on August 27th, 2009 at 2:09 pm #

    Great, great tip. Thank you, you saved me a lot of time because I couldn’t fine mine when I wrote it on a piece of paper. HUGS!

  15. tryingbe on August 27th, 2009 at 2:18 pm #

    ProductKey= “JJWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD8″ did not work.

    RYQYT-JC2JX-8DMB6-2FX29-P849B worked perfect.

    XP Service Pack 2

  16. Greg on September 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm #

    Great tip! I was sweating! Thanks!

  17. Dave.W on September 28th, 2009 at 2:33 am #

    Bought ( Original ) Second hand XP Disk at Garage Sale No product code but this simple tip worked like a dream. Thanks

  18. Copain on October 12th, 2009 at 11:27 am #

    ProductKey= “JJWKH-7M9R8-26VM4-FX8CC-GDPD8″ in unnattend.txt did not work.

    “RYQYT-JC2JX-8DMB6-2FX29-P849B” did not work

    and no winnt.sif or USWXP32P_ZX hidden folder either

    any other solutions?

  19. Digdo on October 18th, 2009 at 5:12 pm #

    it worked with RYQYT-JC2JX-8DMB6-2FX29-P849B!
    thank you, eamon!

  21. Leslie on October 24th, 2009 at 10:16 pm #

    I’ve lost my office 2003 product key but still have the installation cd. my old notebook is dead and unbootable. How can I retrieve the product key from the installation cd

  22. Laura De Souza on October 26th, 2009 at 12:40 am #

    Thanks a lot! You have been a life saver.
    It really worked for me.

  23. JJW on October 27th, 2009 at 11:10 am #

    Excellent- I’ve spent weeks trying to work it out- Thanks to this site, I got it in 3 mins- Thank you Guys!

    • JJW on November 7th, 2009 at 5:07 pm #

      Actually- it didn’t work- I was able to locate the product key- but no luck! I am still searching for help! Can anybody help?

  24. lalaal on October 28th, 2009 at 9:02 am #

    thx for the tip worked like a charm.

  25. Vikram on November 2nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm #

    unattend.txt doesn’t work but winnt.sif works perfect.
    Thanks a ton !!

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