Dead Computer

[Мастер]

It won't even power up. Push the power button, nothing happens. Hold it for several seconds, still nothing happens.

No great loss, I was thinking about replacing it anyway. It's a 2007 Dell, and it wasn't a particularly top-of-the-line model even then. In recent years, I found it painfully sluggish whenever I used it, which wasn't often - I have a much newer and much faster laptop. The data are all backed up. New computer on order, it should come next week.

Now, the challenge - I do want to boot this thing up one last time, because there is certain software installed on the hard drive, which is licensed for a limited number of computers. I need to "deregister" the dead computer, so I can register the software on the new computer. I'm not sure whether the software vendor's security system would be easily hacked or not.

So, assuming the hard disks (there are two, I installed an extra one later) are still alive, are either of the following two strategies likely to work?

(i) Install the hard drive with the system partition in another Dell computer (I have access to a few, although they are newer models), and boot it up.

(ii) Get a USB hard disk enclosure (I may even have some lying around already), install the hard disk in it, and try to boot another computer from a partition on a USB disk.

Any thoughts? Anyone ever done anything like this? The OS is Windows, but not the one that would have been shipping in 2007 - it's the previous one, whichever that is. (I also have a Linux partition and system installed, but I have no need to recover anything from that system.)

[Lance]

Sounds like it's time for a Viking Funeral for the PC.

Either of the scenarios you describe above should work equally well.

But before going through all the trouble I would contact the software vendor and explain the situation. They can probably easily deactivate it on their end. You are not the first person to ever have a PC die with licensed software installed.