Windows activation with planned reinstall

My laptop's hard drive is dying. It still works (boots Windows 7, run some programs), but it is obviously damaged. I am buying a new one to replace it.

I have a legal and activated copy of Windows 7 32-bit Professional (RETAIL, not OEM).

What should I do before installing Windows 7 on the new hard drive? Should I unactivate (I don't know if this even exists) my Windows 7 copy so I can re-activate it in the new installation?

Usually you can activate the same copy of windows about 3 times before you will be forced to call the activation line to do the process. However, if you're reinstalling on identical (or nearly identical; changing the hard drive should be fine) hardware, there's no point in wasting a reactivation, so it's good to be able to back it up directly. There are two ways you could do this.

Full reinstall

If you want to do a full reinstall, it is possible to back up your activation files beforehand, and then restore them once the reinstall is done. I did this recently using these instructions, and it was super easy. To summarize (with some of my own rewording and clarification):

• Back up
  %WINDIR%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\tokens.dat

• Back up
  %WINDIR%\System32\spp\tokens\pkeyconfig\pkeyconfig.xrm-ms

• If using Windows 7 x64, also back up
  %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\spp\tokens\pkeyconfig\pkeyconfig.xrm-ms

You will need administrative privileges to copy these files, and may need to take ownership of the files. If you need help with that, comment below and I'll add details about how to do that.

• Write down your product key. Since you have a retail installation, you should already have it on the disk's packaging. You can also use software like SIW to extract it.

Once you have backed all of those up, go ahead and reinstall. When prompted to enter your product key during install, leave it blank, and choose to activate later. Once the install is done:

• Stop the software protection service by running net stop sppsvc in an elevated command prompt
• Restore each of the files you backed up before to their original locations
• Restart the software protection service by running net start sppsvc from an elevated command prompt
• Run slmgr.vbs -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx from an elevated command prompt, using your key in place of the Xs

Finally, reboot. Your system should be activated; you can check this by going to System Properties from My Computer.

Windows Image Backup

The method which I would actually advise is to do a full image backup. If you have an external hard drive, then you can go to the Backup and Restore control panel and choose to "Create a system image". This will make a copy of everything on your system, which you can then restore onto the new hard drive using the recovery tools from the install disk. I've done this before as well, and it works great - when I had an hdd die, I put in a new one and had everything back to exactly how it was before right away when I restored the system image.

There is no deactivation. You just need to activate with your new laptop.

In case the online activation does not work (though it usually does) you'll need to call MS on the provided number and explain that you are installing a new system.

If you want to keep your windows installation "as-is", look into some sort of "Ghosting" program/service.

I worked at a computer place, where if the hard drive was bad... we could
- put in a new hard drive
- plug old hard drive into a usb type adapter
- boot into a ghost/imaging program and move the old data onto new hard drive.

A fresh install CAN be better in some circumstances... but some people have their computer setup JUST the way they want and a little extra effort to ghost/image may be worth it to keep that setup.

You can change stuff in your computer without losing the activation. There is a limit, but if all you change is your hard-drive, ghosting should work without issues.

This also assumes that the old hard drive isn't broken to the point of damaged data. Hard drives can start going bad without loss of data.

This forum may help you: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7install/thread/514dd45e-6721-4497-ac0e-533e978a2290

Simply put: you may need to call Microsoft and tell them the situation, they'll understand and give you a new key or help you use the same one....

About a year ago, I had to reinstall Windows XP on the same machine, but with a different hard drive...just plugged in the original key, and no problems...