Swapped MB; Windows Reload Options?

corton

Honorable
Apr 13, 2013
1
0
10,510
Hi, all; my HP motherboard fried; fortunately all disk contents intact. Swapped out the board with a non-HP board, but Win 7 will not load; I understand that my copy of Win 7 is "locked" to the old motherboard. What's the least expensive OS option for me? Win 7 OEM? Win 8 upgrade (will the upgrade even start to load in my circumstance?) Win 7 retail?

AMD Phenom quadcore; 6 gb, 1 tb