Hard Drive blue screens in another computer

I suspect it's because of the HAL (Hardware Application Layer). Unfortunately, someone much more up to date than I am would have to respond if this is even possible without a reload.

You can not simply take a hard drive from one computer and use it as a master hard drive in another, as the drivers for the hardware are not compatible from one computer to the next.

Your best solution is to purchase a second hard drive to place into the inspiron, unless this computer already came with one. Then use the hard drive from the Optiplex as a slave hard drive, which can be done with either plugging it into the second plug on the IDE cable (flat cable) or changing the jumper settings on the hard drive to SLAVE

Let me know if you need more details on how to do this.

agreed and agreed.  Licensing is taken care of.  But, it should not bluescreen.  XP should contain drivers.  I dont believe this is software related.

The image that is on that hard drive is tied to the hardware it was installed on. I would advise you to replace the hard drive as you've done and then install a fresh copy of windows on it.

On a side note, you do have some options that will allow you to create a hardware independent OS image. You can then install it on the hard drive once you place it in the new computer. The price for this software will depend on which solution you choose to do this.

I concur with Leew.. You have too much hardware differences to pull this off. Best thing to do is either slave it and pull your data off or use an external medium to do so..

guys, your missing the problem.  Even during boot from cd the box bluescreens.  It's a SATA hard drive, xp comes with all standard drivers for hardware in both pc's.

curious what you would recommend as "External Medium" software you would recommend to extract software applications.

n1wqk, I think your on the right track, I was hoping someone would be able to specify the diff between the two machines.

Are you sure the Inspiron computer functions correctly? there could be something wrong with the hardware within that computer if its not allowing you to boot to CD

The hardware drivers are not limited to the hard drive alone, it correlates to the CPU, Motherboard, Network Card, Graphics Card, etc

XP does NOT come with SATA drivers.  Use the Dell CD that came with the inspiron.  If it still blue screens, you could have a serious piece of malware - I've only seen it once, but ONE time, I had to use DBAN on a disk and wipe it completely before I could get a windows CD to boot properly and reload windows.

it's a sata drive that came from the optiplex and to the inspiron, I'm sure the drivers were slipstreamed in.

Silverkorn,

I can put in the original HD and it loads windows 7 fine.  I'm going to download the dirvers for the inspiron onto the optiplex HD and see if that doesn't help.

The SATA controllers between the two machines is different.  0x7b is usually a storage controller problem.  In order to get it to work, you will need to find a way to get the new storage driver into the original XP installation so it can see the hard drive.

the easiest solution is to keep the windows 7 hard drive in the inspiron computer, take the hard drive from the optiplex computer and set it up as a slave drive. Once you do that you will be able to browse the hard drive within windows 7.

Don't get me wrong ... the chances of actually getting it to a useful state in the Inspiron is almost nil.

Make a UBCD disk, it has a tool that will fix that problem.
http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm 

Get to BIOS and change the HDD mode from SATA to IDE compatible. That should work for you.

Hmm, if the motherboards are different then you have no chance to make it boot even in IDE mode. You need to adjust the OS to new hardware. Get a copy of Paragon Backup & Recovery Home www.drive-backup.com and use its WinPE Recovery CD to adjust the OS to new hardware plus install drivers for chipset in Non Windows mode (in the same WinPE Recovery CD).
Have a look on this article as well: https://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Backup_Restore/A_2569-Migration-to-dissimilar-hardware-How-to-migrate-to-new-hardware-without-OS-reinstallation.html

The problem isn't hardware failure. The problem is that the HAL is different between the two devices. The HAL is how the Windows kernel communicates with the basic hardware, such as the hard drive controller, the CPU, and the memory controller. The Wiki entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction_layer explains it better than I can.

If you don't believe this, try plugging the Win 7 drive into the old machine. You should see a BSoD there as well. Windows just doesn't like having the hardware swapped out from under it.

The most likely reason you're getting a BSoD is because the chipsets between the two models are different. The chipsets control the memory, hard drive, expansion cards, and just about everything else on the motherboard. They use different HALs.

Now, you could replace the HAL, but it's not easy. Even if you get it to work, the hardware differences will break Windows Activation, so you'll have to re-activate. The time spent fixing this will be more than the time spent reinstalling.

In other words, it would be easier to just reinstall Windows. Copy the data you want off the new system's hard drive, insert the Windows XP CD, and install.

This is why I love EE, great minds. I want to try noxcho's option first. If it fails I'll still be able to try the others. This drive has software on it that is to expense to rebuy for my client so switching the hardware is my best option. I'll repost afterward.

Edbedb, which peice of ubcd does what your referring to?

The tool is FIX_hdc. Click Start>Programs>Registry Tools>Fix_hdc.
I used to use the procedure described here http://www.biermann.org/philipp/STOP_0x0000007B/
I used the tool in UBCD the last couple or three times and it worked perfectly.

Try noxcho's suggestion.
Alternatively, Microsoft has a tool called sysprep.  Back in the early XP days the version of sysprep then would return the windows install to the generic and detect hardware are customize at next boot, would retain preinstalled software, but had the problem of ignoring the users and preferences so it was "too much" like starting over again from scratch.  Later incarcations of sysprep allow you to re-initiate the HAL hardware detection without necessarily starting the user accounts over again.
Paragon's tool is more novice friendly.

Experts seemed to have gotten bogged down on the IDE vs SATA but frankly any number of drivers on the motherboard, controller, chipset, graphics, etc etc could cause the 0x7b and NO XP doesn't contain all the needed drivers.  During first install it boots generic stuff but once you install specific drivers then those are what it's trying to run, not the generic ones, and certainly not the ones for the changed machine, slipstreamed or no.  I trust you understand this now.

Once you resolve the hard drive controller issue it is very rare that any other hardware change will cause any significant problem.

also, you mentioned that the software was expensive for your client to repurchase. Most software companies make allowances for machine upgrades and it would be no cost. Contact the vendor and see what the upgrade path is for new hardware.

We ended up reloading completely. Nothing we tried here worked.

I object.

My first comment - the very first comment in the question stated "Reinstall from scratch."  With an explanation as to why a reload from scratch would be required: "(Besides, you're changing a SIGNIFICANT amount of hardware here - XP does NOT like significant hardware change)."


The closing comment states:
"We ended up reloading completely. Nothing we tried here worked. "

Therefore it appears my first comment was completely correct.