Hi Don,
I am not a user of the Steam version of SSE and I had opted for the DVD version. I would say that you are one of the "aces" when it comes to the Steam versions of SSE given your posts. Pardon me, I will not be able to offer firm answers for some of your queries but I would like to pitch in a wee bit
The "Unregister.exe" ....
It seems to be more for addressing "black screen" problems . Please read this post and I hope it may help get some answers for you.
http://80.95.161.114/shipsim/forum/index.php/topic,20593.msg279599.html#msg279599
To the best of my knowledge I don't think you have to run the "Unregister.exe" before transferring your game to another machine. Further once you have registered your copy of SSE in your Profile in the Forum it will always be there.
In the case of a hard drive crash I suppose it can be assumed that whatever was on it can never be retrieved or in other words, a "perfect" uninstall !!
Yes, you can reinstall SSE again on a new hard disk. The same EULA applies like for any other software which simply says that it can be installed only on ONE computer. Fred, has made this very clear in an earlier post in this thread.
SSE does not require any online activation. You may have observed during the process of installation, it asks you for the License key. The main thing is that it can exist only on ONE computer. In the event you want to transfer the whole game to another computer you HAVE TO uninstall it from the existing computer.
To quote my own example, when I got my new upgraded PC, I uninstalled SS2008 completely from the hard drive of my older PC and then conducted a fresh install on my new PC. In the event one does not uninstall the software, needless to say, the second installation on another PC will be considered illegal or pirated
Please read Mad_Fred's earlier post in this thread regarding the same matter.
(Any Moderator reading this post, please feel free to make amendments to anything that I have said in the event the information is wrong or misleading. Apologies in advance !!! Thanks !)
Regards
vin_sun