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I ran into some problems with my machine today which essentially necessitated the reinstallation of Windows. In an attempt to salvage the files on the harddrive before reformatting and reinstalling, I took the harddrive from another computer, and attempted to hook it into mine as the primary operating system. Unfortunately, that second harddrive runs Windows XP. I plugged it in, and I had a screen come up telling me that windows had detected it had been plugged into a substantially different machine, and Windows would need to be reactivated at some point in the next 3 days.

Unfortunately, the mouse and the keyboard ceased to work at this point, I unplugged and replugged, and tried rebooting several times, but no luck. I then gave up and recovering my files, and just did a clean reinstallation with the original harddrive. I slotted the second harddrive (with XP on it) into it's original machine, but now it's doing exactly the same thing; namely, demanding I reactive Windows in the next three days, but the mouse and keyboard cease to function the moment I hit that screen (they still work beforehand on the boot options and suchlike). This second machine isn't mine, and I need to get it working again, but I haven't been able to get past this error or find a solution. I know support for XP has ended, but as far as my knowledge goes, that should have nothing to do with it freezing up at this point on both machines. Advice please, Gentlemen?

Take the original drive, plug it back in, wipe the partitions and install Windows on an entirely new one instead of the preexisting one that's set to use only that version of Windows? If you're wiping everything anyway then do the same to the partitions. If Windows won't install (for some reasons, as by that point it shouldn't even be on the drive), try downloading Ubuntu and throwing that up just to be sure. Its my understanding that you want to do a clean install, so just get rid of everything on the drive and start from scratch. Just hopefully you have the installer for the version of Windows that you want.

Not to worry gents, after much kerfuffle, I've managed to fix everything myself. Your kind eyes/thoughts are appreciated though, as ever.

Any idea what the fault was then? Just for my own curiosity, and well it always helps to know in case someone else has the problem in future.