Find your Visual Studio Product Key through the Registry

Reference: find-your-visual-studio-product-key-through-the-registry

Step 1: Open Registry. Click Start (windows icon) > regedit (Search programs and files)

Step 2: Find VS Product Key:

For Visual Studio 2010

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > VisualStudio -> 10.0 > Registration > 2000.0×0000 > PIDKEY

The above path will take you to the Visual Studio 2010 Product key. For Visual Studio 2008, simply change 10.0 to 9.0 and then you’re done. In the 2000×0000 key, click on the string “PIDKEY” and there is your product key for Visual Studio.

For Visual Studio 2008

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > VisualStudio > 9.0 > Registration > 2000.0×0000 > PIDKEY

For Visual Studio 2005

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > VisualStudio > 8.0 > Registration > 2000.0×0000 > PIDKEY

For Visual Studio.NET

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > VisualStudio > 7.0 > Registration > 2000.0×0000 > PIDKEY

This is really handy if you lost your Visual Studio product key and you need to reinstall or reactivate your copy of Visual Studio.