Drive Failure and WIN7 Reinstall

I am investigating a possible failure with my "C" drive which has WIN7 loaded on it.

My question is regarding license issues with my getting a new hard drive and doing a new install of WIN7. Do I have to call Microsoft and explain the issue and get some sort of permission or will WIN7 install and process as a properly licensed version?

What kind of license are you using? Retail licenses (the one you buy from a store, comes in a box) and System builder licenses get tied to original hardware and may deactivate if you change hardware frequently. If you havent changed hardware around and just plan to swap the hard disk, online activation should go without a hitch. If it doesnt, a phone activation may be required.

Activate Windows 7 by Phone

I purchased (Costco) Win7 Home Premium Family pack in a box with the media and with license to upgrade 3 PC's. I have upgraded 3 PC's from Win XP.

I ran check disk and it fixed a problem but I'm not sure if that was the issue that caused the PC to restart on it own or it was something else. Although check disk crashed a few times with restarts before it finally ran to completion and fixed a free space error. Not sure if the error is due to the disk possibly failing or just a freak software glitch.

I'm just thinking out loud (on this forum) what my options are if the disk does continue to hiccup and I have to replace it and reload windows 7. I don't mind doing that as everything crucial is backed up. Just don't know if I would be allowed to do that by Microsoft even though I own a license.

Test your HD using the HD maker's diagnostics/repair extended CD scan: HD Diagnostic

Follow this with Disk Check if necessary run from the Command Line of System Recovery Options

If you need to move Win7, your options if you have a WD or Seagate HD are to use Acronis free premium cloning/imaging app on their Support Downloads webpages - the manual is there too and easy to navigate. You can clone directly from old to new HD, or use these apps (or Win7 native imaging, free Macrium Reflect or Paragon 11) to save and apply a backup image as well.

Or you can re-install windows 7. Whichever you choose, you can easily reactivate Win7 with a HD change, and with Family Pack you have three licenses which can migrate wherever you want for life, as long as only three are being used at a time.

However if you clean install you'll need to do one of the workarounds given here to activate Upgrade version on a new or wiped HD: Clean Install Windows 7

Thanks for all the suggestions.

However the problem has occured again and the check disk was clean and so was memory tests. So I am back to square one for now! It is possibly something other than the hard drive. The investigation continues.

What about HD diagnostics?

Follow these troubleshooting steps to try to find the problem. An involuntary restart may be logged.

I did check through the event viewer and the only message that I can find is pretty useless at least to me:

"The system has been rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

This does not pin down the problem. What led me to think it was the Hard Drive was that the reboots also occured during the Check Disk processing. However the errors found during check disk were fixed and it happened again in WIN7 and I ran Check Disk and it was clean. Of course I could run other disk checking utilities including those that completely write over the drive however I'm thinking that this issue is something else. Power Supply, CPU, Memory,Video Card, etc.?

Not expecting it to be resolved on this forum unless it is a Win7 issue.

I will go through suggestions offered and continue to investigate.

OK....for the past 7 days the computer has run flawlessly and the only thing that changed was there were updates to WIN7. Included was one where I saw a message about the registry being updated. So can I assume at this point that the issues were all about a WIN7 flaw or an issue with a previous update? Seems strange that it now runs well after those updates. No ramdom reboots.

This could have several causes including bad install of Updates. If repeat errors weren't logged it is hard to determine the cause with certainty.

What I would do now with the good performance is save a Win7 backup image to use in place of any future needed reinstalls, or if a restore point to this know-good time expires: . Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

This is the modern way with built-in drive imaging.