installing Vista OEM ultimate over a previous Vista OEM ultimate?

Hi,

I've got a new PC, which suddenly lost the 8600GTS graphics card on it and
started coming up as a standard VGA adaptor with 4MB of memory lol. Anyway i
tried sorted the drivers for the card, couldn't find it so i thought i'd
reinstall vista see if that did any... It moved the old install over as
Windows_old and tells me I can still see the files but obviously doesn't boot
that old install. I used the same key to do the new install and all worked
fine, though i'm still not seeing my graphics card which is annoying! But
anyway the key comes up different now that what i typed in, the system says
30 days till activation. I hope this makes sense, i need to know if:-
1. its going to be working still as i've heard a lot about Vista taking a
footprint of your system and with me using the key previously..... on the
exact same machine i'd like so add, i'm not trying to move across anything i
just thought a new install would do the job. I'm worried as i don't want to
lose my system one day. Would i need to contact where i bought it from?

Thanks for your help.

 

You need to click the activate button or in 30 days it will stop
functioning.
If you have problems activating over the net a phone number should pop up
tell them why and you should be OK.
Nvidea recommends that you uninstall the old drivers before you install new
drivers....this is done under Control Panel/Programs&Features.
After the uninstall reboot and let Vista load the generic video
drivers....then update to the proper Nvidea video drivers.
peter

 

At least the last two Vista released drivers installation remove the prior driver prior to installing the current.
See step 3
http://www.nvidia.com/object/vista_driver_x86_installation_instructions.html

: Nvidea recommends that you uninstall the old drivers before you install new
: drivers....this is done under Control Panel/Programs&Features.