Bought a new laptop recently. This is my third or fourth HP Pavilion, the only reason I'm replacing the old one is that I dropped it a couple years ago and broke one of the hinges. It's slowly gotten worse and worse, and now closing the screen is a two-handed, multi step process. Anyway, I've had an SSD with all my crap on it that I have moved from laptop to laptop each time I've gotten a new one. Never had a problem taking out the hard drive that came with the computer (usually just put it in the second bay as a backup, and the SSD in the main bay) and putting in the SSD. Until now. The new computer came with Win8, my SSD has Win7 (I hate Win8). I tried to install the SSD and change boot info in the BIOS with no luck. I did enable "Legacy", which is supposed to allow it to boot into an OS older than Win8. I've even gone as far as wiping the new laptop and installing Win7, but still get errors when I try to swap in the SSD. It basically tries to boot, then I get the black screen that says to run the startup repair. Startup repair eventually says the problem can't be fixed, and shuts the whole thing down. There's gotta be something (hopefully) simple that I'm missing....any ideas?
your old W7 install probably doesnt have the all the drivers for new and different hardware.. is it W7 home, ultimate, or enterprise edition? did the fresh W7 install work before you try to add the SSD?
If you can wait until July 29th, Win 10 arrives. Or just buy a new laptop, deal with win8 until you can download Win 10 for free.
When the W7 install completed, it was a brick, all the wi-fi, ethernet, USB, drivers were gone. I managed to get the wi-fi working and then started surfing for the other drivers. I found them all and everything is working just fine with the original drive in it as a W7 machine. The problem only comes up when I try to swap the SSD in. At this point I could just copy over all my files and be good to go, just without the speed of the SSD. That's the main reason I'd like to keep using it. I thought about just waiting for W10, but there's no guarantee I'll like it any more than W8!
it might be the partition table is incompatible. probably an MBR type for BIOS machines and it needs to be GPT for EFI machines. if that is the problem, it get quite complicated to change it and keep the same OS that was on it. it can be done but not something simple. Im just guessing though.. do you have a usb enclosure or adaptor that you can hook to the SSD and then try to see if it will show up through USB?
No, I don't but think I'm in the market for one. I was unaware of the GPT standard, that could be a deal breaker I guess. I'll keep trying in my spare time. Thanks!!
a usb adaptor would probably allow you to access the disk and then you could move the files you want to keep and/or reformat it to GPT then reinstall W7 should work OK. the problem could be something completely different too though, thats just what it seems to me. did you see a "secure boot" option in the set-up screens? if so you can turn that off to increase the chances of booting the SSD. also look for "CSM" and try changing that setting. when I get stumped on boot issues I goto reboot.pro and ask questions.. that site has amazing info on the subject.
