On 05/12/2014 09:05 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote:
You don't have to buy a full new copy of Windows. If you haven't made
an installation DVD yourself there are plenty of people on Ebay
offering these for a much smaller sum reflecting just the cost of
printing and posting the disk, but without an activation code. If your
previously installed copy of Windows 8 was already activated, then you
should find that the new installation is also. I think the activation
information is either stored in the BIOS or obtained from Microsoft
when it goes online to check

From what I understand it's in the BIOS.
..

This is what I used when I replaced the hard drive in a laptop with a
solid state drive, and it works just fine. A big advantage of a
completely fresh install on a blank drive is the avoidance of the
crapware that comes with any system installed by a manufacturer. If
you install it yourself you only install what you want to install.

Yes a clean install would be nice. At the same time those on Ebay aren't
"legal" copies. Dell doesn't put any bloatware on their computers any
more.At least my wife's new Dell doesn't have any.
Istill would like to know why IE is still loading when it has been
disabled. And how it's doing it since there is no exe file for it to be
found since it was diabled.

--
Caver1