ShowKeyPlus

RobertJ said:

If the systems came with Windows 8 or 8.1 pre-installed and there is no COA sticker (i.e. the keys are embedded in the BIOS/UEFI), I believe it should be possible to retrieve the keys from the firmware.

@Superfly: In fact I'm surprised ShowKeyPlus doesn't do this, unless I'm missing something? Why should a clean install of Windows 10 affect OEMM key retrieval from the firmware?

BTW, is there a way to make Win7 key lookup faster? Currently it takes a really long time, and the program remains stuck at "Retrieving edition..." with no indication whether it's hung or still working. If the lookup can't be sped up then perhaps a progress bar can be added?

Showkeyplus will extract bios oem embedded key. Poster was referring to Windows 8.1 retail keys that had been used to upgrade. Problem is that is seems there is no way of telling the upgrade history of a digital licence.

RobertJ said:

If the systems came with Windows 8 or 8.1 pre-installed and there is no COA sticker (i.e. the keys are embedded in the BIOS/UEFI), I believe it should be possible to retrieve the keys from the firmware.

@Superfly: In fact I'm surprised ShowKeyPlus doesn't do this, unless I'm missing something? Why should a clean install of Windows 10 affect OEMM key retrieval from the firmware?

BTW, is there a way to make Win7 key lookup faster? Currently it takes a really long time, and the program remains stuck at "Retrieving edition..." with no indication whether it's hung or still working. If the lookup can't be sped up then perhaps a progress bar can be added?

Windows 7 key checking has always been slow...it's just the size of the configuration file that's extremely large - the only way to speed it up would be a more efficient XML search algorithm (rather than node iteration) - BTW the wait cursor should appear during the "Retrieving key..." process.


BTW: A new pre-release to fix some of the issues reported.

Code:

         Bug fix: Version check returning null error

  Exception wording added for valid keys with invalid configuration resulting in a null response for edition.

https://github.com/Superfly-Inc/Show...howKeyPlus.zip

Thanx @Edwin,

Does our "cheapie" still reflect the nondescript error?

RobertJ said:

It does appear, but that doesn't provide any assurance that the program hasn't hung or something. Is adding a progress bar at all possible? I think it would really help improve the end user experience (UX).

Agreed, it would be nice - but the logic takes place within a MS dll ... without it's source we are at it's mercy...

RobertJ said:

Ok, so good news is it's no longer crashing. Bad news is I'm getting the same error on trying to check a key on 32-bit Windows as mentioned in that GitHub issue:

Is it extracting the 64-bit version of the DLL even when running on a 32-bit OS?

Yes, it should only extract the dll if the installed one fails...but I haven't looked into that yet ... stay tuned.

... and thanx for the feedback.

Hi C,

Here is an odd one - I am running 10 pro Insider in hyper-v unactivated. and I wanted to get the generic key (to tell somebody how to upgrade to pro without reinstalling), and got the following. The host OS is Windows Pro N, although PC was originally 8 Core (normal) with a bios embedded 8 key.

I was surprised to see the Vista message.

Rgds

M.

Howzit M,

Interesting hey? I have the same - Hyper-V has a SLIC 2.0 (i.e Vista OEM marker)