Need to install new os on re-used hard drive

So this is a tangled web I wove. The short of it is I need to install an os on an essentially new system (windows xp is what I have)

So this is the story. I've had my computer for roughly 10 years, ugrading a bit over the years, but it still fell woefully behind the technology curve. In the last year though parts started failing. The power supply went out, got a new one. Then a fan or two gave out, nothing major. Most recently the hard drive completely crashed. I bought a new one and an adapter for IDE to SATA (the motherboard was an albatron that was IDE only). The last straw was the power supply giving out this last week.

I went and I selected a pretty much new computer and was planning on re-using the hard drive from the old one, it was only a few months old. I get all my parts and then put them together, including my old hard drive that still had xp loaded on it. I also bought an external enclosure so I could retrieve some files off the hard drive (in case). The enclosure worked.

I then hoped I could just start the machine up, with the xp boot disk and it would let me re-configure the hard drive for my new set up. Well I did try that but what happened was odder. It loaded a blue screen telling me to restart if I haven't seen this screen before or to change my hardware by pressing f8 (presumably it meant accessing the bios, which in my case is hitting del). Or the other thing that would happen is it would try and boot xp off the hard drive and then it would restart in an endless cycle.

So this is where I just am knowledgable enough to be dangerous in my opinion. My next idea (between various unproductive fiddling) was to wipe my hard drive. I re-installed it in the enclosure and then formated each partition (since I didn't know how to get rid of the partition). Still there's no real progress (it says it can't find the boot manager, and the disk still gives me the same message).

So at this point I'm hesistant to go any further and I'm running out of ideas. My dad's theory is that the version of xp I'm using doesn't have current enough drivers to get the process started, I don't know if thats true or not, but I can see the logic.

My current plans are to:
1) delete the partion (via the enclosure), and then put it back in the case, and see if it loads then (I doubt it will).
2) Or my other thought is to try and load the xp os on the disk as an external and somehow load the drivers on it and then re-install and hope it loads then. (I feel this could work, though I'm less sure how to do it)

However at this point I'm tired and just gonna ask for help.

My current hardware configuration is as follows:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

MSI NF750-G55 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

2 sticks of:Kingston HyperX 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9AD3/2G

HIS H467QR1GH Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

LOGISYS Computer Area 51 CS51WBK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 480W Power Supply

1 tb 3.0 gb/s SATA hard drive (don't have the specific model on hand)

DVD R/W SATA

The version of XP I'm trying to load is:
Windows XP Professional from 2003 (I believe)

Hi there, and welcome to the MySuperPC forums.

Here's the problem. Once you purchase a version of Windows, that license is attached to the motherboard BIOS that it was originally assigned to and cannot be transferred to another computer. You're only option is to purchase another Windows license, and at this point it should be Windows 7 (64-bit) You can get the Systems Builders version of Windows 7 Professional for about $140 or Win 7 Home for about $100.