Yes the replacement includes the hard drive and motherboard. I have tried 3 different hard drives in total, SSD boot drive (original) HDD boot drive, HDD storage drive. All three veriations had the same results. I have not had the chance to try the clean boot yet due to work, however I will be able to do that tonight and will update. When I do that I will use the boot file bypassing steam to ensure no "contaminations" for lack of a better term right now.