Windows unable to start

[Harribel45]

I got all my new hardware working, it runs. Then windows is unable to start. It's Windows Vista. I changed basically everything except the hard drive and gpu. How do I save everything and get windows working without dumping the hard drive...500gs worth of stuff. The hard drive is from an old dell, guessing its oem locked, why it isn't working. but i do want to upgrade to windows 7, if i upgrade on the old pc(download from Microsoft) then do a repair will it work?

[Deleted]

If you exchanged the motherboard etc you pretty much always need to do a clean installation of windows, the whole driverbase is pretty much messed up.
The easiest way is to just plug in another harddrive, install windows onto it, and when you're inside windows copy all the shit from the old harddrive (or keep it there as storage and delete the old windows folder on it)

[chazus]

You can do one of... well, like, 4 things.

1) You SHOULD be able to 'repair' windows vista, if you have the CD that came with it. I'd recommend researching the process (it isnt difficult) because you get the option from the cd to "Fix it" or "Everything's F-d"
2) You SHOULD be able to upgrade to windows 7, without having to 'repair' it. It's technically not broken, it's just set up to be looking at your old motherboard, more or less.
3) You can also move the drive to another computer, back everything up, and do a clean install of Vista, or 7.
4) You can also get a new drive (Maybe an SSD?) and just slave the old drive as well.

Personally, any time I do a major upgrade, I prefer running from a totally clean drive, but any of those options will work.

---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 04:47 PM ----------

If you exchanged the motherboard etc you pretty much always need to do a clean installation of windows, the whole driverbase is pretty much messed up.

99.5% not true. Read above comments. The only situation where you MUST do a clean install, is if the previous install is actually broken in some way that actually causes a repair attempt to fail.

[stevegirwin]

I got the exact solution for my problem because same my window was also giving problem.