Question: I have a failing hard drive which won’t boot, that has Windows 7 Home Premium installed. I have a replacement hard drive on the way.
My question is will I run into problems trying to install Windows 7 using the same cdkey and DVD on the new hard drive? I assume activation will find that the cdkey has already been activated and fail, especially if a hardware ID is checked which will probably be different because even though the other hardware is the same, the hard drive will be different.
Answer: Probably not.
Microsoft allow a certain number of reactivations of both Windows and Office (for example) to cover situations like this.
The only time you might get into trouble is if you try to activate within a short time of your previous activation. This might indicate that you are trying to activate Windows on more than one machine at time.
Even if you do have a problem you can ring up Microsoft and explain the situation.