I'll try to keep this as short as possible but it's going to end up huge. My work has some expensive software/equipment and recently had one of their computers break. It had very expensive software on it and the company told them it would be 10 grand to replace the computer (a 9 year old shuttle worth no more than 100 bucks lol). I'm not licensed IT but I've built/fixed computers and done some IT for a couple offices for years and we're a small company so they gave it to me to fix.
I did all the normal tests (paperclip test on the power supply, which was fine, trying to short with a screwdriver to check it wasn't the power switch, removing unnecessary parts, etc etc) and determined it's either the CPU or the motherboard.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can just slap the hard drive in another computer as I need the actual program not the data. Therefore, I need to be able to boot from that hard drive. Obviously, the ideal would be to find another computer with the same hardware or a replacement mobo/cpu of the same kind but this is an old computer running XP and I can't find the parts or the full computer anywhere even after days of searching. Side note - the XP license is not OEM so it should be maintained even if I switch the motherboard. I don't see that being a problem.
Is there any way for me to get these programs off the hard drive and have them actually work and maintain the program license on another PC? Alternatively, how else can I get a computer to actually boot to this hard drive? I've thought about just making it a secondary hard drive in one of my computers, pulling out the programs file folder, recreating the registry file, and hoping for the best, but I think that's a long shot. Will throwing in a new motherboard/CPU even solve the problem if I can find it? I've got no idea how licenses work. Will the license be tied to the hardware like an OEM windows install, or tied to some key that was entered and therefor not a problem?
Any ideas? Any help is appreciated!!
I did all the normal tests (paperclip test on the power supply, which was fine, trying to short with a screwdriver to check it wasn't the power switch, removing unnecessary parts, etc etc) and determined it's either the CPU or the motherboard.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can just slap the hard drive in another computer as I need the actual program not the data. Therefore, I need to be able to boot from that hard drive. Obviously, the ideal would be to find another computer with the same hardware or a replacement mobo/cpu of the same kind but this is an old computer running XP and I can't find the parts or the full computer anywhere even after days of searching. Side note - the XP license is not OEM so it should be maintained even if I switch the motherboard. I don't see that being a problem.
Is there any way for me to get these programs off the hard drive and have them actually work and maintain the program license on another PC? Alternatively, how else can I get a computer to actually boot to this hard drive? I've thought about just making it a secondary hard drive in one of my computers, pulling out the programs file folder, recreating the registry file, and hoping for the best, but I think that's a long shot. Will throwing in a new motherboard/CPU even solve the problem if I can find it? I've got no idea how licenses work. Will the license be tied to the hardware like an OEM windows install, or tied to some key that was entered and therefor not a problem?
Any ideas? Any help is appreciated!!
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