preloaded computrace questions

hello. new forum member here. hope i am welcome
i tried sifting through the several forums, but could not find any clarification on my quiry. for my college, i am required to purchase a m6400, which dell says comes preloaded with 3years computrace theft recovery software.

scenario one. does anybody know if i were to do a clean install of vista ultimate if the computrace would all disappear? or will a clean install be fine?

scenario two. getting an upgraded hdd with the laptop direct from dell is pricey compared to buying a separate one online. so i am thinking aabout opting to get the cheapest hdd available from dell, and buy a separate one for me to put in when i receive it. how would i go about transfering all the data and such, without loss of computrace, to the new hdd?

thank you for any help.

 

Welcome to NBR

1. Computrace LoJack for laptops is NOT removed even if the HDD is wiped clean or replaced - it installs itself (or at least a portion of itself) into the BIOS of your computer and cannot be removed.

2. Buying your own HDD is a fine idea. You shouldn't have any trouble installing Vista via the reinstall disk on your new HDD, but I recommend imaging your old drive and copying that image to your new one to avoid any activation issues.

 

that's great. thank you. i found a segment in the hard drive stickies where it said using acronis trueimage for the image. this is the route to go, yes?

 

Yes, that would be the way to go.

I recommend first creating the recovery CD, then trying to install Vista on the new HDD using the reinstall disk. If that doesn't work, then image the old HDD to the new HDD.