Hard drive swap - can I reinstall Vista & Dell Media Center?

Hey,

I'm almost ready to order an M1530 but the 200GB 7200rpm drive is really expensive ($250 extra). There are similar drives by Hitachi and Seagate here for $100 less than that, plus I would end up with two drives.

I just want to make sure I'll be able to reinstall Vista, Dell Media Center (does that even come on the M1530 come to think of it?), and any other "bloatware" I might actually like (like CD burning software, etc). I've heard one user say you can only reinstall Vista from the CD twice, and since I've heard Dell Media Center requires it's own partition, I thought it best to run this idea by you first.

Thanks.

 

When you get your new hard drive in your laptop

install dell media direct and just do what it says it will create the partitions for you. install vista onto c: drive (all steps are basically the same as for removing bloatware sticky by les) except you start with no OS and boot from media direct instead of starting with vista, restarting comp and booting from media direct.

You can do it as many times as you want. You own the windows key, you have the right to it.

 

Sweet - thanks. In case I like any of the software it comes with CD's for those, right?

 

im pretty sure it does ya. if not most software is now available on bittorent sites anyway with cracks for full versions. and many can just be downloaded. but i think cd/dvd burning software would've came with it.