Hard drive won't boot

[hd4lg]

Hello everyone,
Here's an interesting problem for you. I recently did a clean install of Windows XP Pro on my son's Western Digital hard drive. I did this by placing the hard drive in an old Dell Dimension 2100 pc I keep for troubleshooting purposes. After a succesful install I returned the hard drive to him, He has a Compaq Presario (not sure what model) where he installed the hard drive. Keep in mind that the hard drive worked perfectly in my Dell Dimension 2100. I did all of the Windows updates (65 of them) before I returned it to him. When he tries to boot the drive in his Compaq the blue screen of death flashes for just a second and the computer restarts. My question is this. Why would the hard drive work perfectly in the Dell and then fail in the Compaq? He can not boot to Safe Mode or access windows at all.

[bayern]

Try this, it worked for me when I installed an OS on my laptop, because my laptop 's CD drive is broken, I took the HD to my desktop, installed the Windows there then put it back to my laptop.


On the Compaq, restart Windows with the Windows CD as if you were going to install it, when it gets to the point where it asks you if you want to install or repair, select repair,
let Windows do the work, when it's done it will tell you to restart, without the CD, usually that will do it.

B

[GX1_Man]

Why would the hard drive work perfectly in the Dell and then fail in the Compaq? He can not boot to Safe Mode or access windows at all.

Because it was installed on totally different hardware than you are expecting it to run on now.

or

Microsoft found a way to foolproof the installation of one copy of Windows on one computer only, per their license.

(THe first is correct for now. Both will be true shortly.)

[RonWalker]

It is possible the new hard drive is too large for his main board to recognize.  In these cases the hard needs to be partitioned to a primary drive of no more than 10 gb and the rest partitioned to maybe 25 gb in each partition depending on the size of the original hard drive.

Ron Walker
Pepin, WI

[GX1_Man]

The first thing I mentioned is infinitely more likely.

[bayern]

GX1 reminded of one thing, I forgot to mention that only the OEM CD will work. It is unlikely that the Dell CD would work on the Compaq.  

B

[GX1_Man]

Who said it was an OEM Dell CD?

[bayern]

I meant it only works on the MS shiny CD. Not on the Dell or compaq CD.

B

[linuxlover]

Another theory that I have is that the RAM is corrupted; it happened to me before. The change in hardware is also something that i've observed. I'm hoping it just needs a clean install. You do NOT want to go through what I have to get my computer operational:
Play with RAM modules until I found one that works (had to ditch 192MB!!!)
Then make a clean install
At best all it needs is a clean install.
Unless it's the Dell CD or the Compaq CD; Then your'e screwed.
If that is the case; get Linux!

Note: if you have decided to get Linux then feel free to PM me about which one to use. I know of about 9 linux distros. (3 for old hardware, 6 for new) I've personally tested 5 of them (plus geexbox). No offense intended if you do know lots about linux; i'm a newbie to that too.

[sneakers]

Loaded on a different machine, its not the same hardware, load windows on the drive while it is in the Compaq.

[GX1_Man]

This was clearly stated in reply #2 24 hours ago.  

[hd4lg]

Hi guys,
I forgot to mention that the HD was not a new one. It was already being used in the Compaq and had Windows 2000 Pro installed and worked fine. The Windows XP Pro install I did was a clean install and not an upgrade. The installation CD is an OEM CD. The Compaq is currently running on a backup HD running Windows 2000 Pro and running fine. That tells me that it's not a RAM issue. Any other suggestions? Remember, the same hard drive works great in my old Dell desktop. Thanks.

[Fed]

Buy a shiny new XP disk & do a clean install on the compaq.
I'd keep using W2K but that's just me.