Windows Will Not Start After Moving Hard Drive from Dell D630 to E6400

I've had a Dell Latitude D630 for over 6 years. I bought a used Dell Latitude E6400 off eBay, but when I put the hard drive from my D630 in it, it would not boot into Windows. It would run until the colored balls started to rotate it would flash a quick blue screen of death and pop into the Window startup repair. The startup repair ran for a while but said it could be repaired, I thought it was fix, but it reboot and did the same thing again. Why. I'd like to use my old hard drive if possible. I had the startup repair pop up every once in a while on the D630, but it never was able to fix it and I didn't try a restore. Any help would be appreciated.


Dell E6400 Specs:

• Intel Centrino 2 Duo 2.5Ghz
• 4GB ram

It would help to list the specs of the two units for comparison.

Usually this is a driver problem. Try entering into Safe Mode via F8 as Windows begins to boot. If it works, disable any driver that doesn't pertain to the new machine. Especially critical is the video driver.

You can also try the VGA option at F8.

If not, access the bios of the two machines, and make sure the new machine is set to the same SATA setting - ACHI or IDE - as the original machine.

johnblood said:

I've had a Dell Latitude D630 for over 6 years. I bought a used Dell Latitude E6400 off eBay, but when I put the hard drive from my D630 in it, it would not boot into Windows. It would run until the colored balls started to rotate it would flash a quick blue screen of death and pop into the Window startup repair. The startup repair ran for a while but said it could be repaired, I thought it was fix, but it reboot and did the same thing again. Why. I'd like to use my old hard drive if possible. I had the startup repair pop up every once in a while on the D630, but it never was able to fix it and I didn't try a restore. Any help would be appreciated.


Dell E6400 Specs:

• Intel Centrino 2 Duo 2.5Ghz
• 4GB ram

Are you using an OEM version of Windows 7? If so, visit the following link for some information;

Installing OEM Windows 7 on another computer after first one died - Microsoft Community

Hi from what i have read and understand is when you instal the operating system on a hard drive it takes a snap shot of the hardware of the machine. so when you take the drive out and put it in another sytem it wont boot cause the hardware is different. sometime doing a repair install will get it going but would be best to do a fresh install when moving a hard drive to another system.

Sir George said:

johnblood said:

I've had a Dell Latitude D630 for over 6 years. I bought a used Dell Latitude E6400 off eBay, but when I put the hard drive from my D630 in it, it would not boot into Windows. It would run until the colored balls started to rotate it would flash a quick blue screen of death and pop into the Window startup repair. The startup repair ran for a while but said it could be repaired, I thought it was fix, but it reboot and did the same thing again. Why. I'd like to use my old hard drive if possible. I had the startup repair pop up every once in a while on the D630, but it never was able to fix it and I didn't try a restore. Any help would be appreciated.


Dell E6400 Specs:

• Intel Centrino 2 Duo 2.5Ghz
• 4GB ram

Are you using an OEM version of Windows 7? If so, visit the following link for some information;

Installing OEM Windows 7 on another computer after first one died - Microsoft Community

It is a retail copy.

johnblood said:

Sir George said:

johnblood said:

I've had a Dell Latitude D630 for over 6 years. I bought a used Dell Latitude E6400 off eBay, but when I put the hard drive from my D630 in it, it would not boot into Windows. It would run until the colored balls started to rotate it would flash a quick blue screen of death and pop into the Window startup repair. The startup repair ran for a while but said it could be repaired, I thought it was fix, but it reboot and did the same thing again. Why. I'd like to use my old hard drive if possible. I had the startup repair pop up every once in a while on the D630, but it never was able to fix it and I didn't try a restore. Any help would be appreciated.


Dell E6400 Specs:

• Intel Centrino 2 Duo 2.5Ghz
• 4GB ram

Are you using an OEM version of Windows 7? If so, visit the following link for some information;

Installing OEM Windows 7 on another computer after first one died - Microsoft Community

It is a retail copy.

OK. When moving a hard drive from one system to another there will be differences between them. Bare metal restore can be used, generally with good results. Terabyte Unlimited has a 30 day trial version of BootIt Bare Metal, if you are interested in trying it. It can be downloaded from;

Boot Manager, Partition Manager, and Drive Imaging - BootIt Bare Metal

Before using the above software, it would be a good idea to do some research on bare metal restores.

I think I'm just going to install Win7 on my new machine and transfer my files. It might be more of a headache, but it should work.