activation failure, new hard drive. , product key rejected,

I've already spoken to customer service after activation wizard failed.
Customer service rep. talked me through an effort to change the Install ID,
and after reboot, installation ID was still the same, and invalid. My
original Vista Ultimate installation in March on this computer was clunky,
and several programs I needed wouldn't run right, including Fax, my wireless
printer (though my wife could print from it. But on my computer, the HP
software installation always failed. HP spent hours with me, no luck). and my
network and internet were unstable) In April, after hours of problem solving
efforts, the Elevated Tech. advised me to definitely reformat my hard drive,
and reinstall vista on it. I delayed, nervous about it, and didn't have time
to reinstall all my programs. Last week I bought a new hard drive, and used
seagate copy and clone to move my old Vista and programs from the original
drive to the new hard drive. But the corruption moved there too, same
problems. So, I installed or reinstalled (since it is same computer, though
different hard drive, my Vista Ultimate to the new drive. But can't
activate it. Humans become abrupt, and I think the cust. service people think
I'm cheating. One error message at automated install relates to the Key
already being in use, and the other that comes up says that key/or copy I
have is only for an upgrade, not a full installation. Originally, he did seem
to try to help, thinking that the Installation ID might be changeable , but
after reboot, the installation ID stayed the same. I shoulnd't have to pay
for a new Vista. Same computer. Corrupt vista on original drive remained
corrupt when I did the Seagate Copy and Clone to the new hard drive. Maybe
my installing my Vista Ultimae to the new drive somehow violated some
mystical activation rule, but I've done what I thought was reasonable and
legitimate. I'm 62 years old, and have a serious hearing impairment. Talking
on the telephone to softspoken non-native english speakers is a real
struggle for me...to matter how excellent their grammar.

Added problem: figuring that activation could be soon resolved, I went ahead
and installed most of my programs on the new drive.... I really need an
activation solution that wouldn't require that I have to start from scratch
again with installation, wiping out my efforts. I'm even willing at this
point to give up and pay an extra 100.00 to go from my Ultimate Upgrade
edition to Ultimate Full, though I shouldn't have to. It's 2:45 A.M, I
should be asleep, not trying to figure out something that Microsoft should
easily have accomodated me about. What is the fix/ the workaround for this
problem?