Problems with moveing HD to a New computer, i think it a driver fault

[ILIKEPINKCHEESE]

Could really do with some advise, I have looked around but I cannot find anyone that has posted about having this problem. So I bought a computer about a year ago. And now I am upgrading to a new build so my brother can have the 1st computer. But as I wanted to keep all my programs, files etc I want to just move my hard drive over. So everything has changed in the computer apart from the RAM (my brother doesn’t need 8GB). I have even changed from a AMD to Intel Processor.

Now this is where it gets interesting, the motherboard in the 1st computer is an ASUS, I bought an ASRock motherboard for the new computer, put it all together and it worked fine, all I had to do was install the new mother board drivers, but I noticed that I had only put in one 4GB RAM card, one I added the other it wouldn’t boot, turns out it was Dr debug code 45, a common problem that is a manufacture fault, so I returned it and got my money back.
So now I have bought a new motherboard, this one is an ASUS board. After Putting it all together and turning it on, it starts to load, the windows image/animation shows and just before it would usually go to the login page it takes you to the black and white screen (I forget the name) that you get on start-up, saying that windows has failed to start and I have two options: 1. run windows repair. 2. Start windows normally. Starting windows normally simply restarts the process. Running windows repair runs for about half an hour then says its finished and restarts the computer, after restart it just does the same again.

So I then put the HD back into the old computer and rolled it back to before I installed the ASRock MB, thinking that there may be some limit of motherboard drivers it can hold or something stupid. This didn’t change anything.

I think that what has happened is that as the Computer is booting with the new ASUS MB it thinks it already has the drivers for it, because the old MB was also ASUS. And as it loads it figures out that they aren’t the rite drivers and panics.

So that’s where I am now, I have backed everything up and don’t mind reformatting the HD and starting from new but I don’t know how to do that, I would prefer to just remove all Drivers and the move it to the new computer because then I would still have all my programs but I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t even know it will work.

P.S. sorry its a long read

 

[fireberd]

With the different hardware, Windows is confused. You can try startup repair but I doubt that it will fix it. Your best option is a clean install (reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything). But, before you do that you will need to backup the user data on the drive so you can recover that after you rebuild the hard drive. Copy the user files to another hard drive or some other media. You will have to reinstall all programs after you do the clean Windows install, you can't just copy programs.

Here is the info on a clean install from our Windows 7 guru's. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

[Kaktussoft]

You should have done this http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

In your case there's so much changed... win7 is totally confused. But I'll try to repair it. First boot normally. Do you see a BSOD? look carefully maybe it flashes for half a second.

Otherwise boot using F8 and select something like "disable auto restart after failure"

How to Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure From the Advanced Boot Options Menu in Windows 7
see also page 2

 

[Kaktussoft]

Do I read it right? You still have the original computer and harddisk and it's working?

 

[DeaconFrost]

Since you have your data backed up, just leave the old drive in place for your brother. It can be formatted and have Windows reinstalled very easily. This method will save you time and aggravation over trying to get it to work in the way you suggested. We have plenty of tutorials here for doing clean installs. It's a simple process.

Since you have a new computer as well, you should be wanting to do the OS install clean on that as well. This way, both computers will be running at their best.

 

[ILIKEPINKCHEESE]

Thanks

Thanks everyone, yeah it seems that i have seriously screwed up by not doing my research before trying to move over the HD. I think i will do as DEACONFROST says and just do a clean install on both HD's so as to avoid any confusion, i'm sure the other suggestions would work but they sound like i could be getting in a bit over my head and a clean install seams to be a simple and good option.

I will use the tutorial that Kaktussoft suggested that i should have used in the first place to transfer the new HD from my brothers computer to my new computer.

I have been struggling with this for a few days now so i really appreciate you all replying so quickly. Thanks a lot!

 

[gregrocker]

If SysPrepping Win7 on the old hardware doesn't work to start it fresh on the new hardware, then follow these steps to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which are the same for retail.