Forgive me if this has been asked before. My current mainboard (Asus A8V-Deluxe Socket 939) appears to be on its last legs. The CMOS no longer retains the BIOS settings if the machine is powered down overnight. I replaced the battery twice, adjusted the tabs, cleaned them, etc. Still loses the settings. For the past few weeks I've simply been putting the machine into hibernate mode. Surprisingly a few time the machine would not wake up, and when I forced a cold start, the BIOS settings were again lost. I decided to replace the mother board. Will I be able to reuse the key I am currently using on the new build? It's an msdn key for "Ultimate" (supposedly 32 or 64 bit version). Can't really verify this as I never tried it on the 64 bit version. The key was only used once on my current system. I'm reusing whatever parts I can salvage. The mother board, CPU and RAM all need to be replaced, however. Do you think MS will give me a hard time activating the OS on a rebuild? Thanks for your time! Happy Holidays!
there's a token backup and restore tool here in the forum, this will save your current activation thus saving you having to re register the key
I want to thank all 3 who replied to my query. I have a definite plan of attack in my head now. Would have sucked to lose a key I've only been using for several weeks. Can't wait for the parts to arrive to rebuild this rig which served me well for over 5 years.