Windows 7 won't start with old hard disk inserted

I've just bought a new PC. The boot drive is SSD and it's quick and quiet. I want to move the hard disks from the old PC across to the new PC. The new PC has an ASUS P8Z68-V/Pro-GEN3 MOBO with AHCI enabled. On the old PC I did a Windows Quick Format on one drive and put it in the new PC. The BIOS can see it but Windows hangs on the Starting Windows screen (the animation plays then just hangs). The drive is a Maxtor 6V250F0 about 6 years old. The drive was jumpered to 1.5Gb/s SATA and I removed the jumpers, either way makes no diff. Windows 'Repair PC' boot gets nowhere (the report looks like everything is OK). I've checked the new PC Reg entry HKLM/.../msahci; it was 3, changing to 0 made no difference. The drive works fine in the old PC. Any suggestions? Is the disk just too old for a new PC? I don't want to buy a new drive and find I still have the problem!

Have you checked the boot sequence in the Bios

DVD, SSD, Generic USB3 - without the extra disk. BUT, it was starting windows so it must have found the boot disk (SSD), right?

Not necessarily true
Windows has a nasty habit of looking for files on two disks if it thinks it will

In reply to a post by andygegg:

DVD, SSD, Generic USB3 - without the extra disk. BUT, it was starting windows so it must have found the boot disk (SSD), right?

Yeah, would suggest BIOS is fine..

Check here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/191201-10-proble...

First of all try changing the sata port it is connected to..

What I'd try first is to put the disk back in the old computer, and run a diskpart "clean all" on the disk. Make sure you select the right disk!

This will clear all partitions, then when you pop it into the new computer, windows will not try assigning a drive letter because the drive will have no partitions. This might get you by.

Is this an OEM image of Windows? It's possible it's just a bodged windows installation and some error is stopping it add a new storage device properly..

Edited by Pipexer (Mon 09-Apr-12 15:22:05)

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

Not necessarily true
Windows has a nasty habit of looking for files on two disks if it thinks it will

But that doesn't have anything to do with BIOS boot order. Windows has no reason to look on the other disk because it has only just been introduced to it. Windows would only look on the other disk if you previously had installed some service or system component on it, giving it a reason to try and look at the other disk.

Further info.
BIOS gives boot sequence as DVD, SSD, hard disk,...
When it went into the recovery environment I carried on to the command prompt. I used chkdsk to see if it could find the disk (where are these commands documented?):
chkdsk D: was the 100MB partition
chkdsk E: was the SSD
chkdsk C: was the new (old!) hard disk
If the OS thinks the HDD is C: no wonder it falls over. But does it and how can I fix this?

Be a setting in BIOS about HD booting order.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Check here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/191201-10-proble...

If I were sure it was the disk I'd be quite happy to get a new disk and put it in

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Is this an OEM image of Windows? It's possible it's just a bodged windows installation and some error is stopping it add a new storage device properly..

The PC (from Chillblast) came with the OS installed so yes, it's OEM

In reply to a post by DavidFinbarr:

Be a setting in BIOS about HD booting order.

See my overlapping reply - the HD boot order is SSD, HDD