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I need to find out if a deployment of Windows 7 to a network was done with OEM, Retail or VL media - if that even matters anymore - it certainly used to in the XP days. I need to know which product was used in case it is what is causing some licensing problems that I'm experiencing.

This information must exist in the registry somewhere?

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2 Answers

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I've managed to find the location. It's in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup\PID
  • 270 means Volume Licence media was used for install
  • OEM means OEM Media was used for install
  • 296 means MSDN media was used for install
  • 335 means Retail media was used for install

There are others I believe, but those four should be the most common.

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Wow, excellent find! Make sure to accept your own answer. Where did you find that information? – WesleyDavid Aug 19 '11 at 2:42
Thanks - have to wait two days before I can accept my own answer. I got the information from this site wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Product_IDs – Kieran Walsh Aug 19 '11 at 6:34
Yeah, good find. – Safado Aug 19 '11 at 14:07
After some research, I'm not so sure you have the right registry key. Try: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProductId – WesleyDavid Aug 19 '11 at 19:42
Hmm, no Wesley, that key doesn't exist on the systems that I've looked at. Interesting that you're finding different results. – Kieran Walsh Aug 20 '11 at 22:09
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You can use a free program called Keyfinder by Magic Jellybean on one of the working computers. This will grab the licensed used to activate it. You can then look at that license and see whether it's OEM, retail, Volume, etc..

It'll also grab other licenses for Windows products, like Office. It's a nice little program.

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Thanks for the tip, but these machines are not activated yet - they are still in their "grace period" of 30 days. Wouldn't that program just show me a serial number though and I'll not be able to figure out the version from that? – Kieran Walsh Aug 18 '11 at 22:33
Ah, gotchya. Well the idea is that you have your licenses documented, so you look up the license number and see to what type of installation it belongs. We're the same way here where we have a mix of OEM, Retail and VL and if we ever find a computer that doesn't have the license recorded in our inventory, that's how we figure it out. In your case, though, it doesn't look like that'll help :) – Safado Aug 19 '11 at 14:05

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