Due to issues from time to time, I have created this entry to satisfy the solution.
12/16/2011
Around 2 weeks ago - Western Digital 500GB HDD died - (still able to revive from time to time in freezer).
Replaced with Seagate 500GB HDD.
Suspected Video Card driver from NVIDIA had something to do with it, so after reinstalling the Vista Ultimate 32 bit, I installed the graphic driver(quite old) directly from the motherboard site(MCP6P M2+).
Everything ran well.
However, when I get to using 3D acceletration features, such as Stellarium 0.11.1 or most other star atlas programs, it's incredibly slow. I figure that old driver from the motherboard site lacks the juice and I had to update the driver from the NVIDIA site, which is a bundled file download that supports more than one models.
Installation went smoothly. And video acceleration for 3D feature softwares works. Except for one called Microsoft Worldwide Telescope (same as before the driver update).
I took a look at the Nvidia control panel. Seems fine. But everytime I close the control panel window, there's a error pop-up: NVIDIA Control Panel Application, 3.0.731.0 has stopped working, Application Name nvcplui.exe was the problem application listed. Should I worry about this? Was this related to what caused my HDD crash in its 'previous' life? I don't know. But since everything still works well, I will be satisfied for now.
But just in case, I have looked up this issue: (it's tempting to do the DEP configuration because after I closed the error pop-up, the tray informed me that the crash was prevented by 'Data Execution Prevention' and I could click into it to read or change some settings - I was tempted to allow exception to NVIDIA program and see if this error would pop up again). But I don't want to change anything on the DEP settings right now because everything seems to work just fine, I don't see the HDD red light flashing like crazy or as solid loading light after the driver update (if the HDD light had kept on solid or flashing busily, I would worry because it would look like the late WD HDD's issue). However, if I am forced to deal with this, I could try installing a beta version by complete uninstall->CCleaner->Driver Sweeper->reboot to detect new driver->install beta with CLEAN install checked under customized or the not so successful roll back driver version.
So I uninstalled Worldwide Telescope. It looks like Google Sky could do just about the same thing. Or the Webclient of Microsoft Worldwide Telescope at their site works just fine as well.