What happens to old disc licence after new install?

Only real issue so far is the laptop is getting so hot it keeps shutting down. It was doing this when I put the cloned drive in as well so must be something to do with putting the new drive in I guess. It's nothing flash - just a Seagate 500GB 5400rpm drive. The original drive was a 320GB 5400rpm drive. I think this one has a 16mb cache instead of 8mb but apart from that it's just a bigger drive.

Am I missing some firmware re overheating or something? Or is this laptop just a pig that won't accept any drive except the one it came with!

As I can't do any more Windows updates without the laptop shutting down part way when it gets too hot, I tried installing the Nvidia graphics driver (copied it from my sd card onto the desktop so it should be safe) and the three Sony utilities for function buttons (Shared Library, Vaio Event Service and Setting Utility Service) in case that made a difference, but none of them did. Also checked that Windows had installed the SPEF driver, which it had.

So might have to give up on this install if the laptop keeps overheating and shutting down.

Started a new thread on the overheating issue.

Yes, the key you found is the mass factory activation key, they are not going to put a different key on every pc they build. The key on the COA is for the end user to reinstall windows when they decide to.

There was no reason for you to buy any discs, you already owned the license to use windows, all you had to do was download the iso file of your version of windows and burn to dvd.

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Windows contains 99% of your needed drivers, but it does not include every driver any pc might need, that would be impossible. If you are happy with your purchase, that`s great.

You were smart and did what you needed to do to get the job done Excellent work !!