7/3/08: UPDATE. Office 2007 apparently stops working after awhile even if the solution listed below is applied.

What do you do when your computer hard drive crashes and you try to re-install Office 2007 and you get the dreaded “Product Key already registered” (or similar) message? I found a great tutorial on this at My Digital Life:

Hack to Activate Microsoft Office 2007 Evaluation Trial Version
Most suites or programs of Microsoft Office 2007 allows user to evaluate the product. The trial version of 2007 Microsoft Office system can be installed by using a 25-character trial product key available from Microsoft while you download the free Office software, and you can use the Microsoft Office 2007 suite or program with full functionality for 60 days.

You may have the Office 2007 CD and are able to install Office 2007 without entering product key. However, Office 2007 will work in reduced functionality mode, where it’s effectively just a viewer for Office documents. Beside, if you forget the trial product key, or don’t wish to register a Windows Live ID to get the trial key, here’s the trick to activate Office 2007, or more correctly, bypass the activation of Office 2007 60 days trial, and making the “trial” word disappear from the Office title at the top and suppress activation and trial expiry prompt.

Note that to use Microsoft Office 2007 beyond 60 days trial period, you need to purchase a valid license for it, available from Amazon or most computer retail store.

To use this hack to crack activation on Office 2007, you need to install Office 2007 without any serial number or product key. If you have installed Office 2007 with a product key or serial number, do the following to clean remove Office 2007 of product key:

1. Close all Microsoft Office applications.
2. Run Register Editor by clicking on Start -> Run, and then type “regedit” in the Open box and press Enter key.
3. Navigate to the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration
    

   Note that inside the registry key, there should be another subkey that resembles the following:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration\{90120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE

   or

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration\{91120000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE

4. If there is more than one registry entries or subkeys that reference Microsoft 12.0 registration, open up each subkey, and then identify the product by the ProductName value data until you locate the subkey for the product which you want to remove the existing product license key.
   For example:
    

   ProductName=Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
   ProductName=Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

5. Once found the correct registry subkey, delete the following values:
   DigitalProductID
   ProductID
6. Close Registry Editor.

Once Microsoft Office 2007 has been installed with no product key, proceed with the following steps:

1. In Windows Explorer, brose to the following folder:
   C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Proof.en\
2. Right click on Proof.XML file, select “Open With…” in the right click menu.
3. In the “Open With” window, select Notepad to be used to open the XML file. In Vista, if you can’t see the Notepad option, simply double click the “Other Programs” to unhide it.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the Proof.XML to locate the following lines:
   </Feature> <Feature Id=”SetupXmlFiles” Cost=”1248″>
   <OptionRef Id=”AlwaysInstalled”/>
   </Feature>
5. Change the AlwaysInsalled to neverInstalled so that the line looks like following:
   <OptionRef Id=”neverInstalled”/>
6. Save the Proof.xml file. In Windows Vista, you may need to take ownership and grant full access permission to yourself before able to modify the file.
7. You can now launch Microsoft Office 2007 application such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and etc without prompting for activation.

As usual, as it’s a hack, and before you purchase a valid product key for it, you won’t be able to AND can’t access any updates or Microsoft Office Online.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purpose only.

MDL blog postings now continue at Tip and Trick, and readers are welcome to join My Digital Life Forums.

Related Articles

• Download Microsoft Office 2007 Free Trial Demo for Evaluation
• Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Free Trial Download
• Get Free Windows Vista Trial DVD for Ready for a New Day Launch Event Participants
• Run and Test Drive 2007 Microsoft Office System Virtually Online
• Direct Download Links for Microsoft Office 2007 Suites and Applications
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Trial Download
• Online Preview and Download Microsoft Office System 2007 Beta 2 Full Release
• Reset or Change Microsoft Office Accounting 2008 Product Key
• Delay or Extend Windows Vista Trial Install and Activation (WPA) Grace Timeout Period Hack

How to Reset or Change Microsoft Office 2007 Product License Key or Volume License Key (VLK)

My Ubuntu server is doing pretty well actually.  The only two issues I am having trouble resolving are:

1. Installing Java runtime environment. The packages offered for installation just don’t work.
2. Using VNC Viewer randomly locks up the system when connecting to a Real VNC or Ultra VNC server.

Other than that, it’s going pretty well. I’ve not installed the Apache yet, but I expect no major issues.  I’ll post another update soon.

And, Oh yes, Gentoo was a horrible disappointment.

It’s been part of my life for as long as I can remember, but some folks still have issues with Ohm’s Law. This chart is an easy reference:

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From the TIW Store:

Cisco Catalyst 2948G Switch w/ 2 - QFBR 5690 1000 BASE-SX modules (Click HERE)

They’re selling it to you by saying it’s “To protect the children,” but YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT WILL USE IT ON YOU! Every one who uses a computer should be aware that the government is using your computer to control you:

Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime

By Benjamin J. Romano
Seattle Times technology reporter

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB “thumb drive” that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer’s Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

“These are things that we invest substantial resources in, but not from the perspective of selling to make money,” Smith said in an interview. “We’re doing this to help ensure that the Internet stays safe.”

Law-enforcement officials from agencies in 35 countries are in Redmond this week to talk about how technology can help fight crime. Microsoft held a similar event in 2006. Discussions there led to the creation of COFEE.

Smith compared the Internet of today to London and other Industrial Revolution cities in the early 1800s. As people flocked from small communities where everyone knew each other, an anonymity emerged in the cities and a rise in crime followed.

The social aspects of Web 2.0 are like “new digital cities,” Smith said. Publishers, interested in creating huge audiences to sell advertising, let people participate anonymously.

That’s allowing “criminals to infiltrate the community, become part of the conversation and persuade people to part with personal information,” Smith said.

Children are particularly at risk to anonymous predators or those with false identities. “Criminals seek to win a child’s confidence in cyberspace and meet in real space,” Smith cautioned.

Expertise and technology like COFEE are needed to investigate cybercrime, and, increasingly, real-world crimes.

“So many of our crimes today, just as our lives, involve the Internet and other digital evidence,” said Lisa Johnson, who heads the Special Assault Unit in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

A suspect’s online activities can corroborate a crime or dispel an alibi, she said.

The 35 individual law-enforcement agencies in King County, for example, don’t have the resources to investigate the explosion of digital evidence they seize, said Johnson, who attended the conference.

“They might even choose not to seize it because they don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “… We’ve kind of equated it to asking specific law-enforcement agencies to do their own DNA analysis. You can’t possibly do that.”

Johnson said the prosecutor’s office, the Washington Attorney General’s Office and Microsoft are working on a proposal to the Legislature to fund computer forensic crime labs.

Microsoft also got credit for other public-private partnerships around law enforcement.

Jean-Michel Louboutin, Interpol’s executive director of police services, said only 10 of 50 African countries have dedicated cybercrime investigative units.

“The digital divide is no exaggeration,” he told the conference. “Even in countries with dedicated cybercrime units, expertise is often too scarce.”

He credited Microsoft for helping Interpol develop training materials and international databases used to prevent child abuse.

Smith acknowledged Microsoft’s efforts are not purely altruistic. It benefits from selling collaboration software and other technology to law-enforcement agencies, just like everybody else, he said.

Benjamin J. Romano: 206-464-2149 or bromano@seattletimes.com

Read the article HERE.

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The experience I’ve had with Gentoo Linux was disastrous. While I have several live CDs (including the incognito .iso) that work just fine with Gentoo, my Gentoo installation was very convoluted and was just too unstable for my use. Why? It may be because the Gentoo I was using was a release candidate for the new build. Perhaps other problems were due to the hardware I was using (an ancient Dell PIII box). Regardless of what caused the problems, I decided to ditch the Gentoo and go back to the Ubuntu.  I’ll still use the live CDs and VMs made with Gentoo, but for my Linux box, I’m going back to Ubuntu.

Read more about Ubuntu HERE.

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The Brazilian blogosphere has not quite yet recovered from its last fright and there is already another threat on the way: a blanket ban on blogs hosted on Wordpress.com after a judicial court passed an order to close down a specific blog.

The reason is a court order issued in March which stipulates the prohibition of access to a particular blog, hosted on Wordpress. The blog’s name and the reason for the ban have not been disclosed. The problem is that, according to Abranet [Brazilian Association of Internet Service Providers], in order for this decision to be carried out, they would need to block the entire wordpress.com domain (it is not possible to prevent access to a single blog, since the entire domain shares the same IP). Blogs based on Wordpress, but hosted under different addresses, would not be affected by the ban.

Read more about this HERE and HERE

I am in the process of installing Gentoo Linux 2008.0 Beta on an old Dell Dimension XPS T500 (Pentium III 500 Mhz CPU with 384 MB RAM). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tonight we decided to upgrade the TIW Blog to version 2.5. How’d it go? It went OK. The only problem we encountered was that pesky little “Internal Server Error 500.” That was created every time the “save” button was clicked. Turns out the error was caused by an incompatible plug-in. If you’re having issues along these lines I suggest that you begin by deactivating all plug-ins and then re-activate them one by one until you find the one that causes the 500 error on your server.

Other than that, all went well. Welcome aboard the latest version of the TIW Blog!!

For those of us who have refused to move to the unstable, inferior, and (extra)bloated Vista, we have the last service pack expected for Windows XP.  Due to be released next week, this service pack is over two years overdue.

What will SP3 do for you?  I’m still unclear about that. Many seem to expect to get some of the security and speed features from Vista’s recent SP1. CRN says:

“Key features of XP SP3 include: support for Microsoft’s Network Access Protection (NAP); ‘keyless activation’, a time saver that allows IT administrators to install SP3 without entering product keys for each copy; and detection of so-called ‘black hole’ network routers that can interfere with network performance.”

Many speculate that the SP3 available via Bit Torrent is actually going to be the final version, but of course Microsoft is trying to discourage people from installing it (Build 5503).

Read more about the imminent release HERE.