Backup HMI ......Options?

I'm trying to give myself a little insurance against some major downtime by having a spare HMI setup and ready for plug and play installation. Our current HMI has decided that it likes to reboot itself every now and then in the middle of a run. No big deal, if you have the patience to wait for it to reboot running at 500 feet per minute.....BLIND! We are currently running an Allen Bradley 6181 that has been discontinued. We did find a current production computer that will work as a replacement. Now comes the pain behind the left eye....we are running RS View 32 Works. If I don't purchase a second copy of the software, the plug and play idea is out. If I purchase a second copy at a little over four grand, I get screamed at. Is there any other way to handle this situation.

BIGE

See if the backup will run with the key diskette inserted in the a drive. this used to work for the programming software in case of a hard drive failure, etc. The key disk allowed operation even though the installs were spent.

backups

As a one time network admin, I use to be nuts about backups, driving everyone crazy. Use The key move utillity to remove the serial number. Use a program like norton ghost or disk clone like drive copy, to copy the drive to another machine. Reinstall the key disk serial number on the working machine. Use your backup key disk if you have a disaster. If by chance you have no back up key, do not install the key serial number, use the floppy in drive A: and boot the machine. Before starting View, install the Floppy, the software does a search of the A: drive if no serial is found on C:.
I dont like leaving key disks in machines on the floor or in control rooms. They tend to disapear or get formated, or written over.
Lock the machine up in a box, write protect the Floppy, and bug the Sales rep you have from AB for extra "backup-only" keys. You can use the reset function on the keys if you like, they work also, but never class the reset as a "backup".

Bruce

If I had the time, I would look closely at replacing it with something less expensive and more reliable. There are lots of them available now.

Norton Ghost will copy the activation as well. So just Ghost the productiion HMI PC and you are all set. I don't believe Rockwell will give you any grieve over that.

I Forgot To Mension.......

The older unit is running Win2000 and the new one will be running XP. I love the ghosting idea, I've done that before and it worked great (although I had forgotten, thanks for the reminder). I don't think I will be able to do it this time.

I'm with RussB...
Is there any reason to use Windows based PC as HMI?
Why is rebooting? Are sure power is ok and all
connections are short or optoisolated?

I'm 98.46% sure the power is O.K. The PLC is on the same clean power and it has not crashed yet, nor have we had any other problems.