MS Word Registration Code Recovery Any way that I can get the code back?

[Sarah81 0]

This is a sort of long story, but I have to set things up for anyone reading this.A couple of months ago, Mom had to do a total hard drive reformat and reinstall. Her computer (Dell running XP Home) was just too full of spyware and other junky stuff that she couldn't get off. I was around to help, but I'm totally stuck on this one problem with MS Word.She owns a perfectly legit copy of MS Word, that came with the computer system (a Dell, incidentally). She bought the system (brand-new) through one of those stupid rent-to-own shops (you know - pay twenty bucks a week for half of an eternity and the computer will someday be yours, at only three times what Dell would have charged if you order directly through them). They gave her the actual software packet, with the registration key code and all.Unfortunately, one of my siblings somehow *LOST* the stupid CD-ROM sleeve with the code label on it at some point in the past, and has no idea of how long ago the disappearance even happened. Now Mom has *no* registration code. We didn't know this when we went to reinstall Word, so of course her copy is unregistered because there's no code to enter.She called Dell. They told her that she would have to call Microsoft. I called Microsoft. They wouldn't connect me to anybody unless I gave them my credit card number so that they could charge thirty-something bucks for software tech support. I went online to see if I could get free help that way. No; they want thirty-something bucks that way too.The only option that Mom really has left, unless she wants to pay Microsoft to help her with the code bit, is to contact the rental center and tell them that she needs another code. That route's not very likely to work though, as she's had the computer paid off for well over a year now. They probably don't even have any customer records for her anymore, as she's not an active buyer or anything like that.I tried using my registration code (I have a copy of Office '03), but unfortunately that didn't work because the two codes don't have the same number of digits. Then I installed my Office software on her computer system, thinking that this would just take care of the stupid problem.The system wouldn't let her activate the software. I went in later and entered the information again. The product was activated, and we thought that the stupid problem was over.Then, the next time the computer had to be re-started, Office (Word specifically) came up with the stupid error message about the product needing to be activated. Does anybody have any ideas on what to try next? I'm really tired of messing with Mom's stupid computer, and I could strange whichever of my siblings it was who moved the CD-ROM sleeves around and made Mom's registration code disappear into some black hole that has since closed up forever.