ARD3 serial number recovery?

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ARD3 serial number recovery?

I have a quick question which I haven’t been able to find an answer for.

A previous IT person where I work purchased 3 licenses of apple remote desktop 3. The serial numbers were never recorded and in his moving on, original serial numbers were lost. I think they were either filed into some place which I am not able to find, or they ended up getting thrown out when cleaning out his old files.

Currently it is installed on 2 machines and the third license is not used. I am going to be cleaning up some machines which means we will be doing clean installs, but I won’t be able to re-install ARD without serial numbers.

So my question is: how do I recover lost ARD serial numbers? They were purchased through CDW but they can’t do anything for us (we asked) since serial numbers come in the box.

Is there a way I can recover the entire serial on the installed machines?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Feb 27, 2008 2:24 PM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

182,686 points

Feb 27, 2008 2:54 PM in response to AaronRob

You can see the serials for any installed copies by launching ARD, going to the General preference pane and clicking on the "change serial number" button. For uninstalled copies, you can try contacting Apple tech support and explaining the situation. They may, on proof of purchase, be able to reissue a serial.

Good luck.

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Answer 2

AaronRob Author

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Feb 27, 2008 3:09 PM in response to varjak paw

While it does show most of the serial, it masks the last 4 characters which doesn't help for re-installing. There must be somewhere that it is stored unmasked...right?

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

182,686 points

Feb 27, 2008 3:12 PM in response to AaronRob

Oops, sorry, you're right; I didn't notice that the last digits were masked. That being the case, you're stuck. The serial number is stored in the preference file in encrypted form so there's no way to look it up. You're going to have to call Apple and hope they can reissue your serials.

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Answer 4

AaronRob Author

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Feb 28, 2008 9:45 AM in response to varjak paw

Since we purchased through CDW (who said they don't store the serial since it is inside the box) apple has no record of it. So it looks like I can't recover it then.

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Answer 5

varjak paw

Level 10

182,686 points

Feb 28, 2008 9:53 AM in response to AaronRob

Sorry to hear that. I had hoped that with proof of purchase of the copies, Apple could issue new serials. If they can't, then they can't. It's unfortunate, but key codes and serials are valuable property and need to be treated as such. It's sad that your predecessor didn't; that's all too common, I'm afraid. Organizations should keep a master list of all software keys, one that's known by and accessible to more than one tech, just for such eventualities, but again, that's not often done leading to just such loss.

Regards.

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