How to recover a lost serial number for Sims 3 games

[loveSims]

Simboy take a look at this thread.www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,21.0.html

[Twinmum]

Pam i Know this is off topic but i do you upload pictures i just started a story

Please Simboy, if you know it is off topic, start a new thread in the appropriate forum. Saying that you know it's off topic does not make it all right.

[djpixc]

Ok, this is good information but my sims3 ambitions expansion pack got stolen, I'm 99% certain of this as I can't find it anywhere, so I know it was installed on my laptop before it died, can I still retrieve it, using my pc hard drive as the master?

[Vegangeekgirl]

Had to re-visit this thread to check which folder you are supposed to look in. When I pre-orded Supernatural on Origin there was a problem and I managed to order it twice. We called them and EA agreed to cancel one of the orders but now I hade 2 serial numbers and no idea which to register! I have shared the tips on other several other sites, always credited where I got the info. Sometimes it has been on Swedish boards so I translated and just credited in the end.

[SimAddicted156]

Quick question, where's Users on a Mac?

[EllaTheTaco]

Go in Finder, search (you probably know where the search thing is in your finder) and search Users (make sure the thing is on This Mac) click the one with the person on it, and thats your users folder

And I have a question, once you get to the Sims 3 Preferences, then what do you do? (A mac)

[shadowlordforever]

Can we save our serial codes in EA websites for backup

[Saltypaws]

If you registered your games, your key codes are saved on Origin.

[Ringquelle]

Hi guys,
Recently my laptop crashed and I had to reinstall all the Sims-stuff I had. Fortunately I had registered all of the games on Origin except for one... 70's, 80's and 90's Accessoires. I do still have the disc and the box of the game, but I can't find the leaflet with the code anymore.

Both of my hard disks from the old computer have been copied to an external HDD, so the old registry should be on it. My question is though, how could I recover the serial from the registry on the external HDD? I tried opening the registry file (NTUSER.DAT), but that doesn't seem to work.

[aenito]

Both of my hard disks from the old computer have been copied to an external HDD, so the old registry should be on it. My question is though, how could I recover the serial from the registry on the external HDD? I tried opening the registry file (NTUSER.DAT), but that doesn't seem to work.

The registry is saved in chunks. The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE part is saved on the file SOFTWARE located in c:\windows\system32\config (change the bold part if you installed windows in not default path).

Also you will need some software tool to read it.

[SimGeeek]

Please please help ... as sim players you no how exiting it is when you get a new game.. well ive just bought sims 3 late night and deleted the confirmation email forgetting it contains the serial code i now need? please please help

[Wai]

Does you e-mail account have a deleted file?  Mine does, so, if you haven't already done this, take a look and see if there is one.  Mine keeps deleted items for 10 days if I don't go in there and re-delete them manually.  Good luck.

[noahroberts1998]

The registry is saved in chunks. The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE part is saved on the file SOFTWARE located in c:\windows\system32\config (change the bold part if you installed windows in not default path).

Also you will need some software tool to read it.

What software tool would you recommend for reading this? I tried everything on my computer and the only thing that worked was notepad... but it came up as a jumbled mess of letters and numbers. 

[Seabody]

What software tool would you recommend for reading this? I tried everything on my computer and the only thing that worked was notepad... but it came up as a jumbled mess of letters and numbers.

If you're only looking to get it from the Registry (ie you've done nothing to your PC that could have moved it anywhere), just run regedit as described in the first post. Otherwise, to read it from the location aenito specified, you need software. A quick Google search turns up this (note, I've never used this program nor needed to get into my registry, so I can't vouch for it).

[Tigergecko4]

I know this is an old topic but I tried your suggestion for recovering a Sims 3 product code and it didn't work. I have Sims 3 Ambitions installed and playable on one computer and I want to install it on another but Origin doesn't show it in my list of games. I went through your steps of retrieving the product code in the registry but when I entered the code in Origin it was not valid. I also checked to see if any of the codes in the registry matched the ones that Origin has and all the other expansions showed the correct product code in the registry except the base game was different. At this point I have no idea what else to try. Any suggestions?