Recover Keys only found 4 keys, all Microsoft. I have a better program in Belarc Advisor so Recover Keys will be uninstalled.

this program has spyware after i installed it i kept getting pop ups.

I installed this program and ran it. It claims to read more than 140 programs, but only found 12 (10 Microsoft, 1 Belarc Advisor and 1 Fresh Devices Programs). I went through the list provided by the company and found that I have 47 of the programs listed, installed and registered on my machine. WHAT GIVE????

I could have used a freeware program to get this information.

Sorry, but I give this program a thumbs down!!!!

ahhh! its done! the one day i dont log on and they actually put a software i really need! Can gaotd put this back up or does someone else know where i can find this??? I really need something like this!

will this work on giveaway of the day software if I want to install again on a later day?

The program found only 5 of a possible 20 or so on my computer. MS Office, Doom3, COD2, PD7, among others, were not found. It found my Quatro Pro, Nero6, Internet Explorer, and Windows serial numbers

For anyone who's complaining about the amount of software it finds - obviously its not going to find much, it only finds just over 140 packages. If you don't use the most popular software obviously its not going to find it. And don't rant on about how your software is so popular - if its not on the list, I can tell you that its not. Admittably, most popular is usually not the most quality or the best, but that's how it is.

However, I really can't bother using such a program. When I buy software and lose the software keys, unless its something that needs an updater (in which case I carefully keep it written somewhere safe) I usually just crack it - I've already paid for it, so nothing wrong with taking back what's mine :D

#33, Re http://www.gtopala.com/ Its a little ripper, Product keys, Detailed System Information, Tells you almost everything.. Thanks..

Very poor software. Only found 14 Keys. Belarc been around years found 24, Belarc is freeware

Barlec Advisor gives a really comprehensive analysis if your Computer. A must for every user, but even it doesnt give all your Keys. I dont think any one programme does. May have to use several to extract as much info as you can..

Notwithstanding the inability of the software to capture a significant number of reg id's (which I pretty much knew it wouldn't be able to do with a whopping "140+" titles"), it's a handy piece of software to download quickly, and for free, to get some of the more major app keys if for some reason you have lost them.

THEN uninstall it, and promise yourself you'll never lose another reg key again.

#45 has the right idea:

Every time I install a new program, I email myself a copy of the registration information (keys or reg file) and place it in a folder called “Registrations”. Any time I need to reinstall…there it is!

Of course you want to do this to multiple free e-mail accounts, like g-mail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. That way, you can always recover ALL your keys even if you have the worst memory and organizational skills. Besides, with some keys being printed on inserts, some keys printed on manuals, some keys printed nowhere, until there's an international standard for recovering these keys, you have to figure out your own system.

If it's a physical product, write the product key on the disk, in permanent ink. And write it twice, in two different spots on the disk, in case one part gets smudged.

Remember, your product key is the only thing that can activate your product, and is the most likely series of 16 or 20 digits that will get misplaced. If your HD is trashed, storing it on your HD isn't going to help you. Store it on the actual media, and/or in web-based e-mail accounts.

As for this software? A cute and quickly useless application for anything more than a one time use and uninstall.

Respectfully to all reviewers...

Kevin P.

It does pick up uninstalled software! Thanks #95 and GOTD .Tried it on my sons Frankenstine setup pulled up his office 2003 key that he lost . That is worth $20.00 by itself. Im keeping this one {untill the next format at least} Thanks again Debbie

It works for me. Im on an old HP picked up at a yard sale . Found 12 keys of soft ware that is not on this computer.She gave a computer shop $10.00 TO clean it so she could sell it. Could this software have another use?

Program found 2 keys. However when I restarted the progam for the 2nd time it didn't find anything and showed the message: "Failed to get data for First Time Execuited". After unïnstalling I activated and installed the program for the 2nd time. This time it didn't find any key and showed the same error message as before. So the uninstall does not clean up correctly. Thanks for trying.

Crap! First of all, I was not given an opportunity to register the software. Second it only found 6 programs even though I have many more on the list installed on my system. Must they ALL be on Drive C:?

If anyone is interested in the very interesting thing I found in yesterdays giveaway then email me at glc63@hotmail.com. I left a comment 2 times yesterday and emailed gaotd and got no response and neither comment got posted.

Oh and this one got me a key for Windows, ashampoo and Internet explorer. Hardly seems worth it to me

Gary,
Please understand
It needs to go online to check the validation from GOTD
Otherwise you can not install it.
You must have let it go on-line at some stage otherwise it would have not installed and you could not report...ONLY FOUND 2 KEYS.

I installed this on five computers, each rather fully loaded with software. It found - at most - 5 MS programs. That's it. Wow.
I do hope that as the developer adds more software & that (s)he will release signature updates. It might be a useful tool after some development. Right now, as is, its not quite ready for prime time.

found only 2 keys. Unplugged from the internet before running it and it wanted to get online as I ran it. Not only does it not do what it advertises, I suspect it reports the keys to somewhere else.

It is a nifty app but only found 2 keys - WinXP and IE.

I have 710 gigabytes of hard drive storage, and HUNDREDS of programs
on my computer across 5 hard drives......

this program found the registration keys for 3 of them lmao

1. Windows XP Pro
2. Internet explorer
3. Ulead Visual Studio


and that's all she wrote folks.....
pretty lame, sorry

thanks anyway GOTD

Found 4 keys. It only supports 148 applications, so I guess I'm not shocked by that.

If only left 70 something registry entries, by the way. The other registry entries modified are always modified by installing software.

Installation was straight forward, didn't require entering any keys or registration which is always nice.

One odd thing, at the end of the installation is asks if you want to run VideoPut. What is VideoPut? I mean it ran the application and nothing else, but I wondered when it prompted what it was wanting run.

Well, how to recover the key of Recover Keys?

Installed quickly and easily on Win ME-SP1. Registered itself when I opened the program. It found a disapointing 6 keys of my hundreds of application keys. No way to add keys you know you have, or edit the list. I use SoftCat to catalog all software installed, and registration numbers and application keys. It even finds things in Common files, and the Pro version scans your program files automatically. You have the option to update the files or edit the files.http://www.fnprg.com/softcat/

This Could have been a great program if it just found all installed keys, instead of using a specific list. Thanks for letting us try this GAOTD.

I ran Recover Keys (RK) and compared the results with Belarc Advisor (BA). RK found fewer keys than BA, but it did find some that BA did not.

What I found very disconcerting was that for one of my MS products the keys found by RK were not the same as those reported by BA, and in fact incorrectly identified the product I have. I have the Office 2003 Standard edition for Students and Teachers installed, and BA correctly identified it and its keys. RK reported this as Office 2003 Professional edition with keys that were not correct (and I have never installed a demo of Office 2003 professional).

Most of the keys that RK found seemed to be correct but sadly, with this experience, I do not feel able to fully trust what Recover Keys tells me so I will be uninstalling it.

that is a pity. I have lot of software and the programm only detects.....4 keys

It seems, that many of You Guys, ,do not read menu of the program. Pls send new requested progs keys to Ostap (see comments #35 - Ostap & #41 by Ants).

Uninstalled, found 4 M$ apps. Blah. Didn't even find Photoshop CS2 or anything like that. left over 98 REG entries, ridiculous for such a small program that does SOOOOO little. On installation, the "Run VideoPut" option on finish was very sketchy to me. Leftover junk from the program skeleton they used???

Program does what it says, so it should be worth the cost to someone who needs it. Might be useful to even more folks if it will run from a USB stick. Haven't tried. :)

This did not find my Adobe Photoshop, even though it says it supports this software.

Kim #37: Thank you so much for the download--it's awesome. Happy Thanksgiving. GAOTD you are awesome too, and Happy Thanksgiving to you to...ya'll have been so good to us! Melinda

Pretty poor (Only found XP key) and a VERY messy uninstall. After uninstalling it left behind 98 invalid registry entries!!! Ridiculous for a program under 2Mb.

I installed it this morning, and uninstalled it after seeing the small number of entries it lists. The SIW program someone mentioned in one of the comments is far superior to this one. Also, when I uninstall something, I usually check the registry for left over entries. Recover Keys left 97 (ninety-seven) useless keys in it!

In an ideal world this software wouldn't be needed--people would religiously record their software keys as they install things (I write them on the install CD/DVD with a Sharpie--and put them in a text file on a flash drive with backups.)

Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world, and many people don't save the key information at all, and even people who do record the information sometimes misrecord or loss it.

It works for the listed software, it has an update feature to permit the addition of new software. While it would be nice if it could detect unlisted software and either find the key or send a message 'home' with the software title, and at least print out the programs even if it doesn't know where the key is (like Belarc prints the whole list,) what would make it most useful to ME is if it could run from a flash drive or at least a CD/DVD.

I do a lot of work on other people's machines and moving a Windows box from one boot drive to another is a real pain. If a tools such as this could run without having to be installed, it would make my life easier.

As is, there are some very good alternatives for free, which means that I can install them on a system before I start to work and get copies of most if not all registration keys. Installing on each machine is a nuisance, but for free it's not a big issue. Paying $$$ each time I move the OS around for someone is not economically viable ofr me or my customers.

Give it 10 for doing what it says it will do, the other complaints I have are for things I'd LIKE it to do--can't penalize a program for not doing things it doesn't say it will do, unlesss you are comparing it to other similar software (where feature comparison is a valid point.) Compared to the free alternatives, it gets a 3 only because it costs and they don't. For free, I give it a 6 because the apps list is so short--hopefully that will change over the next few days & weeks.

Like a lot of 'recovery' software, it may be useless unless you use it BEFORE you need to recover--no program does a good job of recovery key data from a scragged system!

Thanks to the developer and GAOTD for making it available.

works great not sure why others are complaining about?
found ms office 2007 not 2000 , xp alcohol, corel draw. Dont expect to find everything.

I, too, echo a lot of the above ....I have a handful of the applications on the "supported" list but this app only found "Windows xp" and "IE".

This could be a very usefull program, but in my case it found only 6 keys out of a couple dozen. Need more than that for the program to be worth the purchase!

Ok. Just downloaded all 3 key finder programs; Recover Keys, Jalapeno Keyfinder, and Magical Jelly Bean. Recover Keys found 4 items, Jalapeno found 4 items or keys, and Magical Jelly Bean found 3 keys or items.

I find no significant difference between the 3 of them in terms of finding keys. Recover Keys does offer a nice feature in that you can save the list in an html or txt file AND you see the whole list at once. The other 2, you use a drop-down menu to see each one individually. For me, that gives Recover Keys a slight edge over the other 2.

Only found four programs for me, too. Looking at the list of programs supported, I'm somewhat surprised it seems to only list the very latest version of each product; not everyone upgrades to the newest versions (especially for something expensive like Photoshop). And Age of Mythology is listed, but not Age of Empires (any version) for example.

I didn't expect it to find every program, but it would be nice if it searched for at least the past 3 versions of the titles it does support. That's what this program is for, right? In case your computer crashes, you don't want to pay hundreds, thousands of dollars to re-obtain keys.

Older software is still perfectly usable, to a point, and it'd be nice to recover from a reinstall with all my older keys intact as well as my brand new ones.

If I had just paid $20 for this software, I'd be pretty disappointed right now.

Those of you that managed to get this app to pickup their OS must be lucky - all it found on mine was Corel Draw X3 and Office 2003 Ultimate - didn't even pickup Vista Ultimate X64. As with #63 - it found no adobe products.

Guess it don't like 64 bit.

#37 Kim
Thanks for the Belarc Advisor you were right it is the best I have ever seen. You can get it here http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
For FREE. I have been looking for a long time for a program to display serial numbers/keys and finally one that doesn't waste my time. The GOTD is always welcomed and appreciated, and it is the comment section I always look at to find even better programs for free.

this s/w just doesn't do what is says it can. its got a list of s/w which is outdated and is biased on s/w of microsoft, oracle n some games .... magic jellybean key finder found only microsoft keys on my comp but it allowed me to change my winXP key wid ease

Is use this one: ProduKey from NirSoft
It's freeware, supports command line parameters, it's multilanguage and you can export the found keys to HTML report (to save for reinstallation).

#51

"#15 I insatlled IPP150, how do I add reg/serial info to the file list?"

Run the prog, save as a text file. Open the text file and simply add the reg no. / etc on the end of the same line as the listed prog/s. OK, a bit of work but it doesn't take long. Cheers.

Don't waste your time. This is a joke right? I went ahead and installed it when no one was able to answer my question. It found a whole 3 products out of about 50 on their list. Almost everything you would want this to find their support seems several versions behind current versions of the most popular software. It found none of my adobe products! If found none of my Macromedia products either and they are a few years old. This software should be free at best and they should pay users for beta testing at worst.

Found 4. Worthless.

I was very excited about this, even though thumbs up and down were nearly evenly split, because I have TONS of software--including all the GOTD stuff. (Every time I get a new computer, I have to check in with SpellCheck Anywhere, McAfee, WorldMerge and others to recover registration numbers.)

Program installed quickly and easily. My list appeared in a split second. My list of 14 programs, that is. Out of the 194 Program File directories on my computer.

The main problem with the seemingly long list of 140 programs it checks for, is that it isn't 140 unique programs. That's program versions! Five versions of Adobe Acrobat, 5 of ACDSee, about 30 that start with the word Microsoft...

(One can assume it will not provide keys to pirated programs.)

It is disappointing there is no "seek" function for the user to suggest programs it should look for keys for.

On the other hand, Magic Jelly Bean found only three Microsoft products on my system (including the Office Suite). No other programs.

I'm giving this a thumbs up because it is perfectly useful as far as it goes, but for people who have little patience for marginally useful programs, it is disappointing.

"Keep working on it guys."

Not very good, didn't find the following . . .
MS Office
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Adobe Premiere Elements
Adobe Acrobat

Jalapeno and Magic Jelly Bean do a better job.

Relatively few applications supported, in the main Microsoft products. Very buggy on my system, with error messages of various kinds. If I had paid for it I would have been miffed.

I tested this software and found it to be weak. it only recovers some major company keys like Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Office
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Corel Draw
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia Flash
Registry Mechanic
Partition Magic
Sound Forge
Camtasia Studio
Ulead Video Studio

the problem is : all of my major programs like photoshop 11, black magic2, a 300.00 software, avs video coverter, winavi, soundtaxi, replay radio etc... licenses not recovered. which leaves me to say this i will not pay for, because jellybean is free and so much better.