Sonic Foundry software

[granny1]

I have Sonic Foundry's "Video Factory" which IMO is a good piece of video editing software. I've been looking for a long time for a program that would give me alot of control without the high price of Adobe Premiere.
However, I have been some concerns about the copy-protection scheme that Sonic Foundry uses with their newer software titles. As best as I can summarize it, you register the program and you get sent a registry code that gets added to the registry. What I understand is the process takes a snapshot of your PC and then generates an ID for your computer. So then what happens if I install another hard drive or change something, that old snapshot will no longer be valid and I'll have to register the software again? I've read conflicting stories about this and don't know if its true or not. Does anyone else use any Sonic Foundry programs with this type of copy protection scheme? I just wanna see what other people's experiences have been with Sonic Foundry. They put out good programs from what I've seen so far, but this copy-protection is a bit annoying.

[granny1]

btw, being stubborn as I am, I intend to re-install this software again (even though i have a bad feeling this might've caused the system crash in the first place, not sure though) and the copy protection gives me 2 options, to either let the little registry file install itself or i can go into Regedit (something I'd rather not do) and add the registry entry myself. Anyone have any suggestsions?

as a side note, I posted over in 2 other forums under the topic "pc in a coma" and "bad clusters". I wonder if this program is what caused the hard drive error or if it just happened to be coincidental timing that the drive would go bad? I would think that if this program were to mess up anything, it would be the registry first since that's what it modified. But then I don't know *shrug*

granny1 - still puzzled