New mobo/cpu, same hdd/win7 install; stable?

I was planning to find another win7 iso and get that installed and try setting up my OS on that before activating, but after you mention that it could be a disc issue, I figure I'll do a linux install on the drive and see if I can get things functioning. Everything seemed to work on a linux live usb, but I can't rule out hard drive problem with absolute certainty until I have an OS on that drive that doesn't give me problems.

To elaborate more on the errors, the most pertinent one I got was the infamous "this operation requires an interactive window station" error, which appeared every time I tried to plug in a USB device and install the drivers. The little taskbar prompt would pop up, and it would say it was unable to sucsessfully install the drivers. Trying to manually install them through devicemanager, whether I checked online or browsed locally for them, I would get the error. Basic USB keyboards or mice wouldn't work. Only 2 ports on the whole motherboard would let me use a keyboard/mouse in them, and nothing else worked in the ports either.

It is NOT a hardware issue. Every usb device I have works in every port in bios, and also on the linux live usb.

I googled the error to no avail, as the only decent sollution I could find was to copy some system32 files from a functioning windows install into the new one, I'm not confident I handled the permissions in the system32 folder correctly, but the fix didn't even work anyway.

It seems almost certainly a driver issue, with the fact that all the ports work just fine in bios and on linux live session, possibly some kind of disc issue but unlikely. What I don't understand is, if it's a driver issue, why does it work just fine, out of nowhere, on my old hard drive? It's same motherboard, same driver install disc. Shouldn't it give the same problems? The only difference is that I didn't install the usb port drivers on the old drive, I let windows take care of it. its like opposite day with this thing

I'll use the diagnostic tool now and post the results of that. Will also do some work on cleaning up the drivers on the old hard drive. Could this potentially be dangerous? Uninstalling the old drivers? I just keep getting the feeling that it's a miracle this install is working after only installing a lan driver and letting windows have it's way, as usually that just destroys things even further...