1 Get active Linux Distro

If you don’t know which Linux-Distribution you are using, there’s a simple command, which you can type inside your terminal.

To do so, open up a terminal and type: sudo cat /etc/os-release this will give you an output of the name and the ID_LIKE of your Distribution.

Mine looks like this:

NAME="Arch Linux"
                                PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"
                                ID=arch
                                BUILD_ID=rolling
                                ANSI_COLOR"0;36"
                                HOME_URL="https://www.archlinux.org/"
                                DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.archlinux.org/"
                                SUPPORT_URL="https://bbs.archlinux.org/"
                                BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.archlinux.org"

What can clearly read out of this information is, that I’m using Arch Linux as my main distribution.

If you’re using Ubuntu, it would look similar to this:

NAME="Ubuntu"
                                PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu Bionic"
                                ID=ubuntu
                                ID_LIKE=debian

2 Get Windows Product-Key with chntpw

First you have to locate the registry of your windows installation. Normally it’s located at C:\Windows\System32\config.

To get the product-key, you have to read the SOFTWARE file.

To do this, install chntpw with the appropriate package manager of you current linux distribution, In my case I’m typing sudo pacman -S chntpw inside my terminal.

If you don’t know which linux-distro you’re using, take a look at the part Get active Linux Distro.

Now, open up a terminal inside the config folder of the external harddrive, and type

sudo chntpw -e SOFTWARE

This will open up a minimal registry editor.

Now type: dpi \Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

This will now output the Product ID in the following format:

Value <\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId> of type REG_BINARY, data length 164 [0xa4]
                                Decoded product ID: [XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]

The X’s represent the decoded product key.