Question:
How does the Audit Software Licenses work
Answer:
Searching for Product Licenses is a 3 step process:
1. Search under the 'Uninstall' registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
This will identify most Microsoft products, and a large number of other manufacturer's products as well. There is special handling for Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office click-to-run installs, although we can't determine any licensing information for the latter.
2. Search all of the 'Software' registry, looking for 'ProductID' entries.
This should identify software that either does not have an uninstall, or for which the uninstall information is in a different format from the Microsoft standard.
3. Search through a list of registry keys provided in an .xml file.
This is the 'KGetLcns.xml' file copied to the 'c:\kworking' directory during license scans this contains older versions of software.
Most license discovery is automated, so there isn't a list of Software that we can or cannot detect.