How to read a registry file such as 'Software.old' without regedit.

Ok, here is the problem, my friend lost his call of duty 4 key and i first thought, well since you have it installed on your computer already i can just go use regedit and retrieve it. However this is the issue, he has already reinstalled his OS but luckily he has a full backup of his computer along with registry files the problem being, i can't open the software.old with my regedit to find his key. So i was wondering if there was a software out there that would open up the software.old so i could retrieve the key because i have located the software.old its just when i open it up with ms word it gives me a 2million page file. I did get to the Activision registry but it is in stuff like the following

of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare\zone\english\ l a s �ÿÿÿnk  ŸŸ"É h±ð X@� ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿ¸êš ÿÿÿÿ" CC96484EE5365DF41A2241792C682D71˜ÿÿÿnk ’ióžŸ"É hîv ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ PB� Ðï ÿÿÿÿ & z 8 - InstallProperties 2 5 4 ¸ÿÿÿh t t p : / / a c t i v i s i o n . c u s t h e l p . c o m Ðîv Ðÿÿÿw w w . a c t i v i s i o n . c o m t èrP Øÿÿÿvk
& �Üv v URLUpdateInfo àÿÿÿvk Ðñv 113 rityhbin ðv Øÿÿÿvk Èw v Publisherßv ˆßv ðÿÿÿ –0 @–0 1 Èÿÿÿø w È w À w 8 w à w w ˆšw 0 w ˜›w P5x P5x ȱo 4f8aèÿÿÿS - 1 - 5 - 1 8 h ÀÿÿÿØüv ýv Xýv (þv ðþv ÿv Xÿv €ÿv Оv ÿv (úv ø

so i can't extract it without something that actually can translate it back to normal english.

 

find out what the encoding is. Or, try this link: http://www.sysdevsoftware.com/soft/dreg.php it is called direct registry browser, i dont know how well it works, etc.

 

I solved this problem yesterday putting my registry at risk. What i ended up doing is importing his whole entire reg as a hive and from there I was able to go through the files normally and get to the cod 4 key. The weird thing was I couldn't delete the import after but it didn't matter much since I was going to reinstall window 7 in the next day or two.