Is my internal hard drive causing boot issues?

[Nixenus]

Here's the deal, my computer died today. It's gone. Hopefully it's comfortably resting in computer hell. The problems started a month or so ago when it started crashing at random; It continued for a while before I finally got off my ass and ordered new pc parts altogether.

Everything would be fine if my pc hadn't outright kicked the bucket an hour ago, and it now refuses to boot up altogether. I was an absolute idiot and didn't expect this to happen before I got my parts so there are still several things on my hard drive I need to transfer; the issue is that I'm scared the boot issues are specifically caused by my internal hard drive.

I'm not a computer expert. I'm new to pc building so I can't be sure which part of my beloved ex-pc is causing all of this, which is why I'm here.

1. My pc will get to the windows startup screen and load for a little while until it flashes blue and reboots. I can't be sure what the blue screen says because it's gone too quickly for me to make out anything. This also happens during safe mode boots, and running any repairs will just result in a black screen. On top of this, it doesn't seem as if my pc can detect any OS. Can this be caused by my internal hard drive, and if so, what are the possible causes?

2. Can my HDD/SDD be used as an external hard drive in my new pc for the sake of data transfer (in general) and do I run a risk of ruining my new pc if I do this with a corrupted hard drive? And, if I don't, are there any data recovery programs I could use to gain access to the lost data?

 

[Dugimodo]

It could be a lot of things, from a corrupted windows install (entirely software) to a RAM/HDD/MB/PSU etc hardware fault. If you can get your hands on a Linux live CD or usb stick and boot off it that will prove if it's hardware or software, it will also let you test if the hard drive is still ok and access your files. Also you can boot off the windows install Media and try a RAM test.

If your HDD is the problem your files are probably toast, but if not you can absolutely connect it up to your new machine internally or externally and transfer files across. Just don't expect to be able to copy installed programs this way.

It's quite hard to diagnose hardware faults without spare parts to swap out but some things you could try.
Remove all but 1 RAM chip and try it by itself, then swap it for any others 1 by 1 to try and see if any of them are faulty.
Sometimes just taking the RAM out and re-inserting it helps

Take out the graphics card and use onboard graphics

Remove all external USB devices you don't need to start up - they can muck up booting

Disconnect any optical or hard drives except the OS drive - in case they are the problem

check temperatures in the BIOS hardware monitoring, if anything Is over 40-50c in BIOS you may have a cooling issue, and overheating CPU or GPU can reboot or shutdown your PC.

 

[Nixenus]

I checked temperature before I posted just in case and everything was running at an average of 45C
So uh, I removed all the ram and tried it with two sticks instead of four. Now it refuses to boot up at all, everything lights up as normal and then everything shuts down a few seconds later. I made sure I inserted them as carefully as possible but these parts are terribly stiff. I'm never buying a prebuilt pc again as long as I live.