Vista blues

PC Vista Blues. I accidentally clicked the button option to make Firefox my default browser. Wham-o, at next boot my modem doesn't work--it's not even correctly recognized. My ISP software goes haywire. And my DVD drive disappears. Actually, the DVD drive is correctly recognized in Device Manager but the driver can't be loaded (code 39).

I uninstalled Firefox. I think that fixed the modem problem. Firefox shall remain uninstalled.

Where might the driver exist? On the Vista DVD is my guess. Do I have a DVD drive with which to read the Vista DVD? Heck no.

After some research, the following solution worked for me regarding the missing DVD drive (posted here for those who are suffering similar blues):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461/en-us
Yes, it requires getting into regedit and deleting two things. In my case one was missing and so then only had one thing to delete.

My latest blues now is that I seem to be required to activate my copy of Vista. I do the online thing and typed in my key. Website says it's already been activated. Huh? My system is still telling me that I have only 11 days left to activate, after which my princess of an OS turns into a pumpkin and renders my new tool useless.

Given that the DVD drive may at times be non-operational like this, the idea of "HOWTO: Install Windows Vista from a high speed USB 2.0 Flash Drive" is now more appealing.