Boot problems after mobo replacement

cormanaz

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Sep 4, 2010
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Greetings. I had a refurbished HP DC7900 and the mobo failed. The SSD I had installed with W7 and some other software was fine, so I built a new machine with that SSD (and an MSI N3150I ECO mobo with an N3150 Quad Core processor).

I've never had this situation before. I know W7 is keyed to the hardware and you can't just slap the old drive in a new machine and go. But I expected there would be some path to re-entering a W7 key and getting new drivers installed.

When I booted it I got a BSOD STOP (went by too fast to see the number). Booted again and it went to startup repair. It scanned the system and then offered to do a restore to an earlier point. I know this would not work because it would restore to the old hardware, but anyway it hung at this point and wouldn't accept any more keyboard input.

I tried booting from the W7 repair disk. It gets to the point of the "system recovery options" dialog where it asks me to select a keyboard input method, then again it won't accept input anymore. I don't get why it hangs on these input dialogs because it's using generic drivers at that point, right?

So my question is, am I screwed and have to start over with a clean install? Or is there some way to get it to the point of accepting a new key (which I've been told I can probably get from MS) and installing the right drivers? Would attempting the repair from W7 install media help, maybe?

 
Solution
Hi

If this is HP Windows 7 it will be tied to the original HP Motherboard

If it is a Refurbished PC Windows 7 supplied by a official PC refurbishment company and you have a Windows 7 DVD & COA sticker you may be able to get it to activate on a new motherboard

The problem is that the hard disk controller driver for old HP motherboard is causing the Windows to crash on new motherboard

A clean install is best
But if you want to try to fix problem you need Hirens Boot CD which has a program designed to rip the old mass storage driver out of the registry.

Fix_HDC
While designed for XP often works on Vista & 7
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Boot up Hirens Boot CD
Start Mini Windows XP
then run Fix_HDC on registry of Windows on...

exactly if you try to install another version the chance are very low
 
Hi

If this is HP Windows 7 it will be tied to the original HP Motherboard

If it is a Refurbished PC Windows 7 supplied by a official PC refurbishment company and you have a Windows 7 DVD & COA sticker you may be able to get it to activate on a new motherboard

The problem is that the hard disk controller driver for old HP motherboard is causing the Windows to crash on new motherboard

A clean install is best
But if you want to try to fix problem you need Hirens Boot CD which has a program designed to rip the old mass storage driver out of the registry.

Fix_HDC
While designed for XP often works on Vista & 7
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Boot up Hirens Boot CD
Start Mini Windows XP
then run Fix_HDC on registry of Windows on Hard disk

If this fails you will have to do a fresh install of Win 7

Regards
Mike Barnes
 
Solution
Hmm...so I tried booting with Hirens. When the mini XP screen comes up, again it won't accept any input. Same thing with Falcon4 disk. As described above, startup repair and W7 system repair do the same thing--once it gets to a Windows UI it won't accept input. I would wonder whether there's something wrong with the mobo, but the keyboard works fine in the bios and in dos mode on Hiren and Falcon4. Any idea what could account for this?
 
I tried the keyboard in USB 2.0 and that didn't help, but I had an old PS/2 mouse, and that did work. I am still unable to find Fix_HDC either on Hirens or Falcon4, though it's supposed to be on both. Looked around in the DOS and Mini XP views. :-/