Recently I had the task of switching all my company’s tech department computers over to a single volume license product key for Windows that the company had recently bought. At first I went to the Microsoft website expecting to find straight forward instructions on how to change a windows product key, but surprisingly I came up empty handed. I then googled for information on how to change the windows product key and still was not able to find a way to change the product key within Windows. For such a simple task you would think that Windows would have a built in program to view and change your product key. But it doesn’t. The ability to change your product key is a feature that Microsoft has mistakenly forgotten to include in Windows XP. In fact the only way Microsoft even acknowledges that it is possible to change your product key is to go into the computer registry and start changing registry values. First of all this is confusing and could cause a lot of problems for the novice computer user. Second, this only works for volume license product keys, which leaves people with Retail and OEM product keys out of luck.

Luckily there is third party software out there that picks up where Microsoft left off. During my search I ran across quite a few product key changers. A lot of them claimed to be able to change the Windows product key but when it came down to it gave me errors and didn’t work like they said it would. I did find a program that worked for me on every computer without any problems that was called KeyChanger Windows Edition by a company called KeyTech Software (www.keytech-software.com). KeyChanger allowed me to easily change the windows product key with a point and click interface that anyone could use. The best part about KeyChanger though was the fact that I did not have to restart or reinstall windows after I changed the product key, which a lot of the other programs required. In addition to changing the Windows product key, KeyChanger also allowed my to change other information about my computers like the registered owner and the computer names.