Windows 7 can't activate

I had Windows 7 (retail Upgrade version, with key) running on my old computer. Just built a brand new computer, and wanted to run my windows 7 on it (and disassemble my old one). My original plan was to build everything new---except my hard drive---and I

had asked the Microsoft Community before hand if I could do this. The replies were that I could, but I might need to do a repair install and then reactivate Windows (because of the hardware change). I tried that---but after numerous attempts, Windows simply

wouldn't load from my former drive. By looking through the error reports, I came upon, "Root cause found: Unspecified changes to system configuration might have cause problem." Didn't know what to do at that point.

So, today I purchased a new hard drive. I looked at Microsoft Support (using my laptop), and under "Reinstalling Windows 7," it said to choose the "Custom Installation" (which is, of course, a clean install). I did so, and when completed, I tried to reactivate

Windows 7. I went through the procedure with a phone representative, and ended up getting the "0xC004F061" error, caused because I'm trying to use an upgrade version and didn't have Windows XP installed. So, the representative said there was nothing she could

do, and hung up on me. Had I understood that I needed to have XP running, I could have installed it first---although my copy of XP is OEM because I received it when I bought a computer years ago, and so, maybe the key on that wouldn't work anymore as well?

But in my present situation, I don't know how to remove Windows 7 from my (single-drive, single-boot) system to give that a try.

Any suggestions? I likely can't even pay the $40 and upgrade to Windows 8, because the Windows 7 version is not activated. Linux is looking better and better... Thanks for any assistance.

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