Moved Boot Drive to New Computer - Windows Won't Start

Malice

I have moved an SSD drive into a new build. All of the components seem to be fine but Windows just refuses to start. Each time I boot I get the familiar Windows 7 screen for a second then the "Windows Failed to Start" screen shows up. If I choose "Start Windows Normally" then the cycle starts again.

Choosing "Launch Startup Repair" does exactly what you would expect. Now, the problem with this copy of Windows is that someone (me) didn't pay much attention when he bought it and so ended up with a German-language edition. In normal day-to-day usage that hasn't been a problem as the English language pack was easily installed. Unfortunately virtually all of the text in Startup Repair is in German so it's proving quite time consuming to figure out each screen.

Startup Repair begins by asking me if I'd like to submit information to Microsoft. Regardless of what I choose here it tells me "Windows kann diesen computer nicht automatisch reparieren." Google Translate tells me this means "Windows can repair this computer automatically." Babylon.com tells me "Windows cannot repair this computer automatically." I'm inclined to trust the second translation as if I reboot at this point nothing has changed.
At the bottom of that screen there's an Advanced Options screen which accepts my admin username and password. This gives me four options:

1. System Restore -Already tried this (see above)
2. System Image Recovery - I'm guessing this is the equivalent of Restore Point. It found one from July 14th and seemed to rollback to it successfully but nothing changed when I rebooted
3. Memory Diagnostic - This started up but left me back at the startup prompt again without actually reporting if any problems had been found.
4. Command Prompt - I can browse around the files on the drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can fix this? I have the Windows DVD + license key so if worst comes to worst I can presumably reinstall the OS altogether but I'd rather avoid that if possible

kippy

Malice wrote: »

I have moved an SSD drive into a new build. All of the components seem to be fine but Windows just refuses to start. Each time I boot I get the familiar Windows 7 screen for a second then the "Windows Failed to Start" screen shows up. If I choose "Start Windows Normally" then the cycle starts again.

Choosing "Launch Startup Repair" does exactly what you would expect. Now, the problem with this copy of Windows is that someone (me) didn't pay much attention when he bought it and so ended up with a German-language edition. In normal day-to-day usage that hasn't been a problem as the English language pack was easily installed. Unfortunately virtually all of the text in Startup Repair is in German so it's proving quite time consuming to figure out each screen.

Startup Repair begins by asking me if I'd like to submit information to Microsoft. Regardless of what I choose here it tells me "Windows kann diesen computer nicht automatisch reparieren." Google Translate tells me this means "Windows can repair this computer automatically." Babylon.com tells me "Windows cannot repair this computer automatically." I'm inclined to trust the second translation as if I reboot at this point nothing has changed.
At the bottom of that screen there's an Advanced Options screen which accepts my admin username and password. This gives me four options:

1. System Restore -Already tried this (see above)
2. System Image Recovery - I'm guessing this is the equivalent of Restore Point. It found one from July 14th and seemed to rollback to it successfully but nothing changed when I rebooted
3. Memory Diagnostic - This started up but left me back at the startup prompt again without actually reporting if any problems had been found.
4. Command Prompt - I can browse around the files on the drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can fix this? I have the Windows DVD + license key so if worst comes to worst I can presumably reinstall the OS altogether but I'd rather avoid that if possible

The issue is with drivers basicilly which is not that straightforward to resolve and may involve using a few tools including sysprep that are not that easy to explain/work with at best. Im not sure if system repair exists on 7. That might work.
Do you still have access to the old build and is the drive working on that?
If so I would suggest backing up your data and installing windows from scratch on the new machine as it would be quickest and tidiest option.

vibe666

you usually won't have much luck transferring a boot drive from one pc to another, there are hundreds of files and settings that are installed when windows is that tell it how to use each and every tiny component in the computer and you've just changed them all and now it don't start because it doesn't know how to.

you can try installing a fresh copy of windows over the top of the old one, but i'd personally be backing everything up onto another disk and then doing a fresh install on it and then copying the files back over.

Malice

Thanks folks, that's pretty much what I suspected having browsed around the Internet a bit. I'll put it back into the other machine and have a look at what files might need to be kept before putting it back in the new machine and reinstalling Windows.

vibe666

The files and settings transfer wizard is your man there, it will nice just about everything over pretty much , although it doesn't work quite as well when you are changing languages.

free_man

Hi,
Such swap worked for me abt 1 yr back. It never worked in Windows XP days.

On further investigation I found out the reasons.
1> Both were SSD configured as EHCI and not softraid
2> Both were pre EFI M/Bs.

But spec were completely different
1> I7 1366 vs E6200 duo
2> Nvidia 560 vs intel onboard
3> ROG III vs Fujitsu proprietory
4> 4 HDD and 1 SSD vs 1 SSD

My conclusion is if you can match the boot drive settings and EHCI options, the swap will work.

kippy

free_man wrote: »

Hi,
Such swap worked for me abt 1 yr back. It never worked in Windows XP days.

On further investigation I found out the reasons.
1> Both were SSD configured as EHCI and not softraid
2> Both were pre EFI M/Bs.

But spec were completely different
1> I7 1366 vs E6200 duo
2> Nvidia 560 vs intel onboard
3> ROG III vs Fujitsu proprietory
4> 4 HDD and 1 SSD vs 1 SSD

My conclusion is if you can match the boot drive settings and EHCI options, the swap will work.

The swap can and will work in different scenarios as you say and is more likely to won on windows 7. But if you try it and it doesnt work theres only one relatively easy option.