upgrading hardware

hallo chaps!

so, as some of you might know, my pc died on me. and without any successful troubleshoots i put it down to hardware failure. that i needed to upgrade my parts anyway, they were getting quite worn out.

my question is, im replacing/upgrading my CPU RAM and Mobo. i remember vaguely that my OS partition WILL still be there, but its never a good idea to keep said installation - im probably going to have to just reinstall everything and make a clean slate? or?
what are the options on keeping the data i already have? im not particularly bothered about keeping it since ive backed up the data thats important, im just wondering what could be possible?

also, if (since most probable) i do a clean install, how/where do i go to contact micro$oft in order to reactivate my windows? since i know that my key will still be set to my old system and itll probably tell me on automatic updates that my key is now invalid.

thanks for any info gents

Well, you will have to do a clean install since you're getting a new motherboard and CPU, video card, etc.

IF you have a Retail Windows 7 or Upgrade Windows 7 you shouldn't have any problems activating it. IF you used an OEM edition, then there will be problems, but a call the MS Tech support should clear it all up regardless.

Uh, im not sure, i got mine via download at launch cos i preordered it? :/

Your just replacing the MOBO/CPU/RAM yes? Not the HDD with the O/S.
Why don't you just re-install the same HDD see what happens then contact M/S and tell them you had a fried MOBO or something like that and what you've had to do.
They'll probably just re-issue you with a new key. Or maybe allow you another download. Alternativley contact them first, tell them what you need to do and see what they say.

well as it turns out, W7 is amazing! after being SUPREMELY confused for about 20 mins, it installed all the new drivers etc and is running like ...well normal!

By "supremely", I am fairly sure you mean bsods happening and other issues.
Seems they've sorted themselves out which is fortunate for you.

I completely agree with Nibiru's advice. As the experiment has shown, it is not impossible to run Windows on new hardware without a clean install.

I personally would never go that route. And that's me, with lots of experience analyzing crash dumps and have good abilities to sort any issue I may come across.

Moral of the story: New motherboard calls for new, clean Windows install.

Thanks for the support on that one, TG.

Anytime a complete electronic hardware rebuild is done such as above with mobo, CPU, and RAM a fresh clean install is imperative because of the the driver issues, etc.

no actually, it BSOD'd only once, and once i flashed my bios its been fine. you are right about a fresh install, and thats why i bought a new HDD to replace this one tmoro, but for now, its nice that W7 was able to ....reconfigure the new system for me.