How To Recover Your SharePoint 2007 Product ID / Blogs / Perficient

(This article outlines a fix for the MOSS 2007 SP2 licensing bug. Its technique can also be used in general to recover Product ID.)

Update 2009.06.25: Microsoft has published a hotfix. See Stefan Gossner’s post for download links and more information.

As you may have heard, there is a bug in the installer for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007’s Service Pack 2. In short, the current installer for SP2 resets licensing to a trial version (which expires after 180 days). No other data is lost and behavior is not otherwise impacted.

Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround: reapply your product key through Central Admin > Operations Manager > Convert License Type.

But how do you recover your product key? Well, you might be able to retrieve it via Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center. However, that’s not always convenient.

I figured there must be an easier route. It turns out there’s no way to do so natively through Central Admin. So I figured the answer must be in the registry. But where? The most obvious place would be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftOffice Server12.0. However, nope, there’s no licensing information there. So where could it be?

I decided to search for Microsft’s standard "DigitalProductId" key. As you may know, Windows XP introduced a new way of storing product IDs that’s still used today. Microsoft stores licensing information in an obfuscated blob associated with the product’s GUID.

Searching the registry led me to the answer. MOSS 2007 Product Keys are actually stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0Registration{90120000-110D-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}. (You have to love the "0FF1CE" suffix.)

Armed with this knowledge, it was straightforward to write a script to extract and decode the Product ID:

' Extract MOSS 2007 Product ID
' Written by Bert Johnson (PointBridge)
' Revised 2009.06.25
' http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/johnson_bert/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=10
Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
 Set reg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\.rootdefault:StdRegProv")

' Check 32-bit installationsprodKey = GetKey("SOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice12.0Registration{90120000-110D-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}", "DigitalProductId")

' Check 64-bit installationsIf len(prodKey) < 1 Then prodKey = GetKey("SOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice12.0Registration{90120000-110D-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}", "DigitalProductId")
 If Len(prodKey) > 0 Then
    wscript.echo prodKeyElse    wscript.echo "Product ID not found."
End If

Public Function GetKey(path, key)
    Dim chars(24)
    Dim productkey(14)
 
    reg.GetBinaryValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, path, key, prodid

    ' Handle situations where the product key is not found
    If VarType(prodid) = vbNull Then
       GetKey = ""
        Exit Function



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    End If

    For ib = 52 To 66
        productkey(ib - 52) = prodid(ib)
    Next

    ' Possible characters in the Product ID:
    chars(0) = Asc("B")
    chars(1) = Asc("C")
    chars(2) = Asc("D")
    chars(3) = Asc("F")
    chars(4) = Asc("G")
    chars(5) = Asc("H")
    chars(6) = Asc("J")
    chars(7) = Asc("K")
    chars(8) = Asc("M")
    chars(9) = Asc("P")
    chars(10) = Asc("Q")
    chars(11) = Asc("R")
    chars(12) = Asc("T")
    chars(13) = Asc("V")
    chars(14) = Asc("W")
    chars(15) = Asc("X")
    chars(16) = Asc("Y")
    chars(17) = Asc("2")
    chars(18) = Asc("3")
    chars(19) = Asc("4")
    chars(20) = Asc("6")
    chars(21) = Asc("7")
    chars(22) = Asc("8")
    chars(23) = Asc("9")
    For ib = 24 To 0 Step -1
        n = 0
        For ikb = 14 To 0 Step -1
            n = n * 256 Xor productkey(ikb)
            productkey(ikb) = Int(n / 24)
            n = n Mod 24
      Next
        sCDKey = Chr(chars(n)) & sCDKey        If ib Mod 5 = 0 And ib <> 0 Then sCDKey = "-" & sCDKey
    Next

    GetKey = sCDKeyEnd Function

Simply save that to a file named "ExtractMOSS2007ProductID.vbs" and run it to recover your key. Once recovered, re-apply your Product ID through Central Admin, as outlined in KB971620.

Does it work for both pre-SP2 and post-SP2 installations?

Yes. It turns out that the MOSS 2007 SP2 installation process updates your licensing status (as found in the "SettingsBlob" key), but it doesn't actually alter the "DigitalProductId" field. Thus, your Product ID should always be recoverable.

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How To Recover Your SharePoint 2007 Product ID

by PointBridge Blogs on May 24th, 2009 | ~ minute read

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