Dell Vostro 1700 - Why Torture Yourself

I have a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop (why?) running Vista 32bit... for unknown reasons suddenly the screen turned blue said something about a bad kernal and then went black. After millions of attempts I finally got it running in safe mode and moved everything off it that I needed. Next I tried to reinstall with the disc I thought came with it(???).

But after going through all that reinstall (numerous crashes/unplugs/lift lid/plug back in/push button = millions of times, etc.) it seemed to have reinstalled only to tell me that the version disc is not for this machine. What? = BULL

However, I know I have heard of discs having like built-in counters on them that won't allow you to use them after a certain number of times. Is that what is going on here? I have used this disc to fix/reinstall a few times but I doubt more than twice (2) unless they count everytime you tried it and were unsuccessful. My wife doesn't think I'm doing much. Pfft...