Your paying 200.00 in child support and paying for the house while she is playing with a guy from geek squad ?
Remove your OLD HDD - Connect the new SSD - Unplug all USB devices except Mouse & Keyboard and give it a try - Should work. Try using DVD instead of USB boot. No need to worry as your OLD HDD will retain all data and current installation unmodified.
First I would like to say thank you to all who replied. I moved the the mouse and keyboard to the two USB 2.0 ports. Then I disconnected everything but the mouse and keyboard. Booted from a flash drive and everything went great. I got my mouse and keyboard back and the installation went smoothly. I checked the old disk and no data was lost. Again thank you.
So the main issue was having the kb and mouse in the USB 3 ports. Hmmm I think I just learned something I need to make a note of
I know it's already solved but i'll do a one more comment. I work with it for more than 30 years (my age is 46) and 3 months ago i had a problem with microsoft mouse. I tried to format a HD to make a ghost of a win 7 installation and always give me a BSD at the end. Then i search the internet for an error and discover this is an issue of all microsoft keyboards and mouses (wireless or not). Logitech works fine.
Microsoft wireless Mouse & Keyboard combo (USB) had issues with certain BIOS/Motherboards even during boot.