Hello mikeinaustin,
I belive that Vista is telling you that you that you have 3 days to Reactivate. Windows (both XP and Vista) will ask to be re-activated when they sense a significant hardware change. This is normal and expected behavior.
You can reactivate over the Internet or by Phone. I have provided the instuctions to Activate by Phone:
Click the Start button, and type in "slui.exe 4" in the search field and then press the "Enter" key. This will bring up the Activate by Phone dialog window. Follow the steps provided by the window. The phone activation process should only take about 6 minutes.
If you are unable to re-activate or if re-activating does not resolve your issue, please create a New Forum Thread, download and run the Genuine Diagnostics tool at this link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Click "Continue" click the Windows tab, click the "Copy" button, then paste the report into the new thread.
Thank you,
Darin Smith
WGA Forum Manager