theog said:
Mark Phelps said:
Bare Foot Kid said:
If you were to change the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or any other piece of hardware the factory image will not install, it has to be the EXACT same hardware or it will fail.
Is this a new limitation?

Asking because I had a hard drive fail in an HP Media Center PC (running XP), and I did the following successfully:
1) Inserted a new hard drive
2) Booted from the first HP Recovery CD
3) Reinstalled XP
4) Booted from the Driver CD
5) Reinstalled all the drivers
6) Rebooted in XP -- everything worked and didn't have to reactivate it.

What I read (and my experience bears it out, at least, with XP and this machine) is that the license is locked to the BIOS, and as long as you don't mess with that, it will reinstall without difficulty -- even if you change the hard drive.

But, maybe with Win7, things are different now.
Yes, still locked to the BIOS.


Thanks!