Re-activate when restoring C drive from an image? Or no?

Wondered if anyone else has been through this:

Somehow AA 3.01 got corrupted to the point that only Multitrack View and
NOT Edit View  would even open on one of our XP machines. Everything else--
including AA2 and 1.5 - continued to work  fine, but AA3- nope. This machine
is XP Home, SP3.

First I tried all the good tips shown elsewhere here about deleting the settings files, etc.
(several times in fact... cold re-booting each time around) Those have saved the
day in the past - but not this time.

Still same problem -was getting the 6025 error, but couldn't go to EV to try
and disable or de-select any plugs,  which by now I suspected might be the cause. 

Even tried to de-activate, full uninstall and then reinstall (AA3 then upgrade to 3.01).
Still same thing - no Edit View at all - just the "pure virtual function call" error,
identical problem to before I uninstalled etc.

Finally, de-activated AA3 again and restored the entire C drive from a Ghost image taken
when everything worked fine, but was made before installing 3.01 a while back. 
I then re-activated and after that re-installed the 3.01 patch/update.   
That got things back OK. (and everything else continued to also work OK)
I noted that I had NOT de-activated AA2, for instance, and yet it came back
fine after the Ghost restore (I forgot to take that precaution for AA2!)

But, curious to know if anyone knows if the de-activation is necessary when you are
going to restore AA3 and all else on the C drive from a backup image like Ghost makes?

Or is that not necessary? 

Since this is a 2nd system and that used up both AA3 activations, I wanted to play it safe
when this took place-- and not have to go buy another copy! (We do have multiple
copies of AA2 here though).

Thx in advance for any replies.

In principle, restoring a complete disc image from Ghost onto the same drive wouldn't require a re-activation. But I would not be so confident at all about doing this onto a drive with a different serial number - if you see what I mean...

Thx Steve, yes I do understand what you mean I think.
And of course this was indeed the same SATA drive it originally
was on. 

What was interesting about it was just restoring from the Ghost
image worked fine for AA2-- because I had totally forgot about de-activating that.
I probably should have-- following the same logic as  did with AA3.
But lately I don't use AA2  nearly as much as 3.01- so it slipped my mind (all too easy!)

It was also interesting that upon restore, the program doesn't open
at all until it is activated, unlike a new install on another drive or system,
where it will do so for a trial period. 

As an aside: I've always found the trial period before you must activate to be quite
useful with both AA2 and 3. It allows for getting things happy with a newly built system, 
and stress testing/tweaking things for a while before deciding it's a workable build
for normal  work. 

But...  that behavior would also be consistent with what you noted. 

Thx as always for the clues/tips!

Just a sidenote. 

I HAVE done the restoring an image to a new physical drive and not de-activated AA3.  This DOES need reactivated.  But I'm sure most of you knew this.  I didn't do enough research before installing my new HD.  I mean it wasnt a big deal, I called Adobe and they re-activated it for me.  (A lot nicer than M$ is on these things.)