Win7 HDD boots in one laptop but not in another

[mickrick]

I was asked to look at a Win7 laptop that will not boot. It starts up, then just as the 4 coloured dots come together on the startup screen, it freezes, blue screens and immediately reboots. It also reboots when trying to start in safe mode. I have tried Win7 repair, different memory, hdd checks, virus scanning the hdd etc but to no avail.

Now the strange part. I put the hdd in a different make and model of laptop, different chipset etc, and it booted to the desktop with no problems. I tried a new hdd in the offending laptop, installed Win7 and it booted fine, so I take it I can rule out hdd and memory issues. So now I'm thinking it could be a driver issue. But how do I uninstall the drivers without being able to boot the laptop? Do I just clean out the /windows/inf and /system 32/drivers folders?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[hang-the-9]

Re-install Win 7 on the system on that new drive, copy the files over from the old drive. If you delete those folder without the laptop being able to boot, you will not fix anything.

 

[mickrick]

Do you mean do a files and settings transfer, or copy the entire contents over the top of the new installation and choose not to overwrite existing files and folders?

 

[hang-the-9]

Do you mean do a files and settings transfer, or copy the entire contents over the top of the new installation and choose not to overwrite existing files and folders?

Files and settings, not the contents. Since you have an issue with something on the drive, you don't want to copy more than just the user files. You'd have to re-install the applications but at least user data will be saved.