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aquadodo
Welcome Newcomer

USA
16 Posts
Status: offline

Posted - 09/09/2009 : 3:23:08 PM

Not sure if this is the right forum but here goes...

I'm trying to inventory our copies of Office installed on all computers but have had some problems with uninstalled versions. What I mean is that key finders will display several Office keys if an old version was uninstalled because the registry entries aren't removed. We were using OCS but my supervisor wanted something more accurate.

My supervisor wants me to make a script to get the keys. I'm thinking of having it check the registry for the Office install path then verify that the files exist in that path before returning the key.

How do others keep track of license keys?

pageda
Old Timer

USA
306 Posts
Status: offline

Posted - 09/10/2009 : 09:30:24 AM

We've used Magical Jelly Bean (which has a command line component) and psexec. So, create a list of the machines you want to target in a text file and then have a script that runs through each computer name, connects to PSEXEC which is on all the C: drives, copies the magical jelly bean files and script, runs it and then drops it to a network location.

Quick...yes. Accurate...not always. It's also subject to the problem you're mentioning regarding old keys. We generally just know which version is accurate which requires manual work in removing the 'wrong' one but that's the best we've got for free.

------
Dave Page

Rastor728
Old Timer

USA
323 Posts
Status: offline

Posted - 09/10/2009 : 1:30:39 PM

If you install and run the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit available for free, it will scan your domain system (it uses your domain admin account to scan) looking for your installed OS's, Installed versions of Office, and if your computers have the minimum hardware requirements to Run Vista/Server 2008.

It takes awhile if your organization is rather large. The last time I ran it was at a public school with 2500 workstations and it took about 4 hours the first time.

The system will create an Excel Spreadsheet with all of your current inventory with data about upgrade capacities etc along with your installed Office Versions (and patches for Office I believe).

You can download it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=67240B76-3148-4E49-943D-4D9EA7F77730&displaylang=en

From there you can derive your license counts, and if you are in or out of license compliance for OS's and Office.

"a fanatic is one who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject." --Sir Winston Churchill

Edited by - Rastor728 on 09/10/2009 1:31:51 PM

aquadodo
Welcome Newcomer

USA
16 Posts
Status: offline

Posted - 09/10/2009 : 3:19:37 PM

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've tried Magical Jelly Bean and Key Finder but we're not sure which is the accurate key because some people have had several different versions. I guess I'm just lazy and don't want to manually check each computer.

I haven't used the Assessment and Planning Toolkit. I'll give that a try and see if it reports old keys.

I found a powershell script (http://powershell.com/cs/media/p/1553.aspx) to decoded the registry binaries into the standard key format. Changing the Windows registry key to the Office key returns the correct product key so I just need to tweak it so it runs on a remote computer and checks for the installed Office files. I guess this thread is starting to belong in another forum.

Edited by - aquadodo on 09/10/2009 3:20:42 PM

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