> I've replaced the PC that runs it twice already, which was a significant > pain the second time around as it was impossible to reinstall one > critical third-party license. > > Back about '99 I had responsibility for a couple of PC based industrial systems that had "licensing issues". The trick I used then - and may be useful to you now - was to "image" the hard drive on the dying machine. When I loaded that image on a new machine, I had to spend about three hours getting windows drivers to be happy with the new hardware (98SE at the time) but I had no issue with the "third-party" stuff at all. Of course, then I imaged it a second time so I'd not have to go through that again. The replacement PC I used was one of the standard office machines at that company. A deliberate choice as it functionally meant they now had about 20 identically configured "hot spares". -Denny --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .