| I'm thinking that if I image my hard drive, then I'll lose all that
| software if something expensive goes wrong with my computer so that I
| end up having to buy a new computer. I'm presuming the image of the
| hard disk on one computer can't be pasted onto a different hard drive in
| a different computer, can it?
|
It can, with some caveats:

* The new computer components need to have drivers
for the OS. If you buy a new computer today, the
motherboard, graphics, etc would need to have drivers
available for your OS. That's usually easier to do if you
build yourself. A Dell XYZ will probably only have drivers
available for whatever OS they put on their XYZ model,
and their motherboard may be custom. On the other
hand, if you build yourself you get thr drivers from the
maker and they usually support everything they can.

* The motherboard drivers need to be uninstalled before
imaging if you might be re-installing to a different board.
Otherwise there's a good chance it won't boot. When you
uininstall the drivers Windows will put in generic drivers,
which will enable you to boot so that you can install the
new drivers.

* If your copy of Windows is OEM licensed then it's
not licensed to go on a second machine. You may not
be able to activate it.

A disk image is still a good idea, though. I always create
images for all machines I use, after all the software is
installed. It's insurance against a failed hard disk, and
if something like malware destroys the install it just takes
a few minutes to re-install a fresh copy.