Windows 7 Ultimate issue (weird)

players54

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Hi

The other day I got given a system by my friend as he upgraded to a newer system
its pretty old but I want to set it up and give it to my mother because she likes to watch Netflix in her room.
So my friend took all ram, and HDD out of it
I replaced it with some spare DDR2 ram I had.
I put 8gb in it
I then proceeded to put my old 1tb hardrive in. It already had windows 7 Ultimate installed and I didn't think it would be an issue.
So I booted the machine and it got to the windows 7 starting screen where it says "Starting Windows"
Then when it started to do the animation, it stopped half way through, flashed blue (BSOD) and then restarted the computer. I didn't think much of it at this point, I though because it was just put in it would be okay second time round. I was mistaken. This happens everytime.
So I took out my 1tb HDD and put in a 640gb with windows xp installed on it.
It booted with no problems. but it was slow as I don't think you can have above 4gb ram on xp. which isn't a problem, but my mother isn't to familiar with the OS and would like it to be on windows 7. So I then took that hardrive out, and then I though I have a 320gb HDD with windows 8 on it.
Put that in, and then it booted straight up. No problems, but again, my mother can't get on with the OS and asks for help every 5 minutes, which I don't mind but it can get annoying.
So I tried another hardrive with windows 7 on it, same thing happened. Long story short, 4 hardrives later, no luck. So does the computer have a problem with windows 7 or am I doing something wrong? Its really confused me and I cannot understand why it won't boot, but will onto any other OS.

If you have any suggestions they will be appreciated, thanks.
-Josh
 
You're doing something wrong.

You cannot take a hard drive with an OS that was installed on one machine and move it to another machine and expect it to run reliably. You need to get the install disc and do a fresh install of the OS on that machine. When Windows installs itself on a machine, it configures itself for the hardware in that particular machine.

Another possible issue is the RAM you installed. Since you have never run that RAM in that machine before, you don't know for sure it is 100% compatible. It may not be a problem but until you can get the machine booted with a properly installed OS, you won't know for sure. You could try downloading MemTest86 which is self-booting to test the RAM ane ensure that is not part of the problem.
 
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hi
okay, I understand that completely
I've never had an issue with moving hardrives, but I have also installed a new version of windows 7 directly on the hardrive on the machine. It still did the same thing
and if its a ram issue, I wouldn't have thought that it would boot other os's if thats the problem, but I'll have a look into that anyway.
thanks
 
You're doing something wrong.

You cannot take a hard drive with an OS that was installed on one machine and move it to another machine and expect it to run reliably. You need to get the install disc and do a fresh install of the OS on that machine. When Windows installs itself on a machine, it configures itself for the hardware in that particular machine.

Another possible issue is the RAM you installed. Since you have never run that RAM in that machine before, you don't know for sure it is 100% compatible. It may not be a problem but until you can get the machine booted with a properly installed OS, you won't know for sure. You could try downloading MemTest86 which is self-booting to test the RAM ane ensure that is not part of the problem.

Hi, I think I have narrowed it down to being the graphics card in the machine. I have read up on it and it says to install an old driver. The problem I have is, how do I install a driver without booting. If you could help that would be great.
 
Hi, I think I have narrowed it down to being the graphics card in the machine. I have read up on it and it says to install an old driver. The problem I have is, how do I install a driver without booting. If you could help that would be great.
Does the motherboard have on board graphics by any chance? If so, you should be able to remove the current video card, boot into the BIOS and enable the on board video. If that allows you to boot the machine, then you could uninstall the driver for the video card then re-install the card with the desired driver.
 
Does the motherboard have on board graphics by any chance? If so, you should be able to remove the current video card, boot into the BIOS and enable the on board video. If that allows you to boot the machine, then you could uninstall the driver for the video card then re-install the card with the desired driver.

Hi
It doesn't by the looks of things
theres only a male vga adapter
(Where the pins stick out)
Is there any other way?
 
That's a serial port plug. VGA is female.
You need to check if the system can use or handle 8GB and or a TB hard drive.

You can move an OS but you have to remove the hardware drivers and lock the OS. When it wakes up on the new system it will try to reconfigure itself. That works on XP and Vista. Not sure if it will work on win7.
 
In order to do that, he would need to be able to boot the OS somewhere, then run the sysprep /generalize command to remove the hardware drivers. Then he could install the drive in the new machine and let it attempt to configure for that machine.
 
You can move an OS but you have to remove the hardware drivers and lock the OS. When it wakes up on the new system it will try to reconfigure itself. That works on XP and Vista. Not sure if it will work on win7.

In order to do that, he would need to be able to boot the OS somewhere, then run the sysprep /generalize command to remove the hardware drivers. Then he could install the drive in the new machine and let it attempt to configure for that machine.

I've been able to do this before but didn't do any of those commands. I plugged the hard drive of an HP Probook that I installed Windows 8.1 Pro onto and put it into a desktop and had no troubles.
 
I've been able to do this before but didn't do any of those commands. I plugged the hard drive of an HP Probook that I installed Windows 8.1 Pro onto and put it into a desktop and had no troubles.

Thats what I mean, I've never had problems with moving hard drives, and I know that isn't the problem.
The system can hold 8gb no problem and my friend had a 1tb drive in it so that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm just stuck now because the driver I need to install needs to check if theres a nvidia graphics card in the machine you're installing it on. and since my other computer doesn't, I can't just install it onto the hardrive. (thats another things, the 1tb hardrive with windows 7 on it boots perfectly on my other computer)
I just don't know what to do.
 
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