Can I reinstall Vista on a new hard drive after the original hd cr

[Larry A]

I upgraded XP to Vista Home Premium; my hard disk has crashed (mechanical
failure). Will I be able to put my Vista upgrade on a new hard disk without
having activation problems? (I'll install XP first on the new HD with my
computer OEM disk, then do the Vista upgrade).

 

[Charlie42]

I upgraded XP to Vista Home Premium; my hard disk has crashed (mechanical
failure). Will I be able to put my Vista upgrade on a new hard disk
without
having activation problems? (I'll install XP first on the new HD with my
computer OEM disk, then do the Vista upgrade).

Restrictions apply to hardware changes on OEM systems. If you alter your
machine to the point where Windows thinks it's a completely different
computer, you will not be able to activate. Replacement of motherboards and
system hard drives are well known to cause such issues.

However, should you encounter this problem, all hope is not lost. Use the
phone activation service, wait until you get to talk to a real person, then
explain your situation to him or her.

Charlie42

 

[Not Me]

You will most likely have to do a phone activation as your key has been used
once.
It should be a matter of telling them the HDD failed and you
reinstalled...just another PITA IMO!

 

[CB]

I upgraded XP to Vista Home Premium; my hard disk has crashed (mechanical
failure). Will I be able to put my Vista upgrade on a new hard disk without
having activation problems? (I'll install XP first on the new HD with my
computer OEM disk, then do the Vista upgrade).

Larry A,

You should have no problems reinstalling your Vista OS. However, I
would recomment that you do not reinstall the XP OS and then do an upgrade to
Vista. I would reformat the harddrive and do a clean install of the Vista OS.
I had two internal harddrive failures on this computer over the past
year. Each time I simply installed the new harddrive, reformatted (because
the new harddrives came with the original OS imaged on them, with a recovery
partition. I wanted a single partition, clean of any preinstalled crapware
and no recover partition, as I will use my Acronis True Image software to
recover, if necessary.) and did a clean install of my Vista Ultimate OS.
My Vista Ultimate OS came as a retail UPGRADE, not the FULL version.
Many people will tell you that you cannot do a clean install with an upgrade
disk but they are incorrect about this. Simply insert the disk and boot from
your CD or DVD drive.
Also, many people suggest that you do two installs of the OS,
installing the first time WITHOUT entering the license key and then
installing a second time, inserting the license key during the second
install. I have found this to be totally unnecessary. I only install the OS
one time, inserting the license key during the install process. Once the
install is complete, I immediately activate the OS online. I have never had a
problem installing with only one install and my activation has never been
denied. The activation is verified in less than 10 seconds and accepted as
genuine.
A clean install is the only way to go. When I purchase a new computer
the first thing I do is reformat the harddrive and remove everything on it to
eliminate all the crapware and the problems caused by it. This will eliminate
any chances of any conflicts with your previous software and give you a much
leaner, cleaner system.
I hope you are successful in installing the Vista OS. I'm sure you will
like Vista and appreciate all the functions of it. It will take some time to
get used to the new OS but after awhile I'm sure you will not want to go back
to XP.
Have a nice day.

C.B.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I don't really se why you'd have any issues. As long as the major
components remain unchanged, such as motherboard, cpu and graphics, then
activation shouldn't be a problem.

Even if those major components changed--even if he replaced the entire
computer--there would be no problem. His upgrade copy is, by
definition, a retail one, and retail versions can be moved from
computer to computer without a problem. Only OEM versions can not be
moved.

Worst case, if enough hardware changes, reactivation may have to be by
voice phone call to an 800 number, but that's quick and easy.