The program can read license keys stored in the registry in the open form (as a plain unencrypted text). Please check the "License Information" section of the program settings where you can configure the registry paths for obtaining the license keys for necessary software products.
Problem of Retrieving License Keys for All Software
Unfortunately, many software vendors do not store their license keys in the registry as a plain text so it is impossible to configure our program for reading them. Some vendors store the license keys in files. Some of them encrypt the registry data using proprietary algorithms. Registry paths for a single program can also change from version to version.
Unfortunately, we cannot add support for reading license keys for all possible products. Our inventory program can read serial numbers of Microsoft Windows and Office products (it even supports variable paths and the key decrypting).
By default, the program supports several products of other vendors and we can even try to help you finding out registry paths for your necessary products upon request (we cannot guarantee the positive result in this case because of the above - not all vendors store keys in the registry unencrypted).
Getting Custom License Keys from Registry
You can try finding the license key location in the registry for a product using the following instruction:
- Open the RegEdit program.
- Please check this path in the registry: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\<Vendor_name >\<Product_name or Product_name_version>\"
- If the path exists, please open the registry branch and look at the parameter names. If you see something like "serial", "key", "license", etc. click on it and check the parameter value. If it contains the correct license key, you have found the license path. You can copy your current registry path to the clipboard using the context menu.
License Audit without License Keys Is Possible!
If it is impossible to get and check the license key, you can use the program's License Manager and control validity of using software by counting installations and comparing this number with the number of computers where you can use the product according to the purchased license. The License Manager counts numbers of installed copies automatically, displays them, and allows you to manually enter numbers of allowed computers for the products you use.
Partial Product Keys, MAK, KMS, VLK
Now, it is becoming more popular to activate software through the Internet and store the license information not locally but on the activation server. Thanks to this, it is becoming impossible to get full license keys for Office 2013 and keys for Windows activated using MAK (Multiple Activation Keys), KMS (Key Management Server), and VLK (Volume Licensing Key). Microsoft started to use a special Partial Product Key (the last 5 symbols of the full license key) for checking the license key validity. Our program supports these partial keys for MS Office and Windows activated by MAK.