Question USB peripherals not working (tough / weird issue)

[McGuierk]

My uncle's computer died and i had an old computer sitting around, so i popped in his old IDE hard drive, fired it up and none of the USB ports are getting power. It boots fine but before the login screen i get a message that says something along the lines of: The hardware configuration has changed, you must activate windows within the next 3 days). The peripherals are fine (im actually using them to type this message), and i know the board is fine because i had been using that computer until just very recently when i built this new one.

Ultimately the question i am proposing is: Do you think its possible that it is the OS (win xp) on the IDE Hard drive that is causing the issue, and if i put win 10 on an SSD and popped it in, everything would function again?
I would need to purchase an SSD to try this so that is why i am asking beforehand.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

It's because you are trying boot a Windows XP which was installed on a different system --- it cannot cope with totally different hardware specs.
You must install Windows XP from scratch on the computer you intend to run it on --- XP will just not tolerate being moved from one PC to a different one.
Only Windows 10 can theoretically be moved to different hardware but even that sometimes needs a fresh install.