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I have a Dell Optiplex 380 machine and the motherboard's video chipset died and I needed the data on the HDD, and I would like to keep the Windows 7 installation intact.

So I took another fully working Dell Optiplex 780 and I installed the same WD Caviar Blue HDD in it. Windows wouldn't start, so I then proceeded to do a boot repair and ran the standard bootrec/bcd repair commands and I managed to get it to the "Error Recovery" / "Boot Selection" screen (where I can tell it to start windows normally or in Safe mode). However, when booting Windows, with automatic restart disabled on error, I see a blue screen of death stop error code 7b. I'm pretty sure it's related to the HDD drivers. So I updated the bios and fiddled with the raid/ahci options, but it's just doing an infinite loop type reboot with the BSOD. Anybody know how I can install the drivers on the OS via command line? If presented with this case, does anybody know any recommended solutions to get Windows 7 to boot?

Thanks

TheFrack
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It sounds to me as if the Dell Optiplex 780 consists of different components compared to the Optiplex 380. So that means the reason for your problems could be a different graphics card (unlikely though, because if would usually default to VGA resolution then), a different Intel chipset, a different HDD controller (SATA, AHCI, RAID etc.), a different network or soundcard etc. etc.

Generally it isn't the best idea to try to boot a Windows system on a completely different hardware, as you example shows.

If all you need is the data on the harddrive, why don't you just connect this harddrive as a SECOND harddrive to your Optiplex 780 (or any other computer for that matter) and then access the necessary files after booting the regular Windows on that computer and copy the files with Windows Explorer to any location needed (e.g. a network drive or USB pendrive)?

That should work without any issues, give you instant access and save you the troubles you are experiencing right now.

Olaf Arlt
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