My Turn! (Laptop Assistance)

[Kyouhen]

I see there's a few other threads here regarding computer problems, and hope nobody will mind if I add mine.

I've got an old laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A70. I've had it for a few years now and it's pretty much on it's last legs. One of my uncles had an old Compaq Presario R4000 that pretty much gave out on him. He claimed the hard drive had stopped working, but later told me some techies at a store told him it was the motherboard and that he would be better off getting a new laptop. Sounds like an attempt at getting him to put out more money, but either way he took out the hard drive on his Presario and hasn't really been able to get the hard drive working for a while. Since I need just about everything but a hard drive I asked if I could have the Presario, and he said sure.

So now I have a hard drive from a Satellite and I'm trying to get it running on the Presario. If I fire it up I get to the "Windows is Loading" screen, then when it leaves that screen I immediately get the BSOD and it restarts. To give it a quick test I tried starting it in safe mode and it works just fine.

So my question is, does anyone know what would be causing that BSOD and how to fix it? I had read that it could be a problem with the video drivers, but when I attempt to install the ones listed for the Presario I just get an error saying it can't find them for my current hardware. Anyone have any other ideas?

[kusje]

You probably need to reformat it because some of the drivers for windows won't work on a different laptop.

*edit* if you can get safe mode to work, you might not need to reformat. You can try deleting the old drivers and it will automatically install new ones for you. I'll try to see if I can figure out which ones you should delete in a while.

[IonDragon]

Definitely drivers, possibly fixable without reinstalling, though probably not worth it. Boot in safe mode and recover any data you need to keep to a flash drive or external HDD and reinstall is your best bet.

[Erloas]

Put the Windows disk in and do a recovery install. The lowest level components of Windows are based on the system it is installed onto (not all processors have the same instruction set, and other low level controls that aren't really like normal component drivers that can be upgraded and changed) and if you change the base system too much then it won't run. It won't even boot into safe mode the majority of the time.

A recovery install will re-install all the main OS components and leave everything else including user files and settings.

It might be worth just buying a fresh hard drive though. Laptops, with their movement, is one of the hardest things for a hard drive to deal with and much more likely to cause failures. Hard drives are generally only rated to about 3-5 years (though its more like 5-7 in average conditions) of life. If the computer is several years old the hard drive probably isn't too far away from dieing itself. A new drive is only about $50 and since you are going to have to completely reinstall anyway its not going to be any more work.

[Kyouhen]

Put the Windows disk in and do a recovery install. The lowest level components of Windows are based on the system it is installed onto (not all processors have the same instruction set, and other low level controls that aren't really like normal component drivers that can be upgraded and changed) and if you change the base system too much then it won't run. It won't even boot into safe mode the majority of the time.

A recovery install will re-install all the main OS components and leave everything else including user files and settings.

It might be worth just buying a fresh hard drive though. Laptops, with their movement, is one of the hardest things for a hard drive to deal with and much more likely to cause failures. Hard drives are generally only rated to about 3-5 years (though its more like 5-7 in average conditions) of life. If the computer is several years old the hard drive probably isn't too far away from dieing itself. A new drive is only about $50 and since you are going to have to completely reinstall anyway its not going to be any more work.

I'd like to keep the hard drive as it still seems to be working fine. My old laptop is coming apart at the seams though. Literally. There's no 'g' on the keyboard anymore, the 's' isn't far behind, it makes a horrible racket when the fans come on, and one of the monitor hinges won't last much longer.

Anyway, I'm looking up how to do that recovery install now. Hadn't occurred to me that motherboards wouldn't follow the same plug-and-play just about everything else uses.

[kusje]

Which version of windows is this?

[Kyouhen]

Which version of windows is this?

I'm running Windows XP.

And the recovery install thing didn't work. Does anyone here have any idea what could cause Windows to bluescreen when doing a normal boot but not when going into safemode?

[kusje]

It's still most likely the drivers even if system restore didn't work. It'll probably be easier for you to backup your data and do a fresh installation.

If you're feeling adventurous, you could try following the instructions in this article: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/07/09/move-windows-xp-hard-drive-or-change-motherboard-without-getting-blue-screen-of-death/

[KoboldRevenge]

How did you use your computer to post this? :smalltongue: