Reboot loop and can't boot from CD drive!

Sharpy963

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Aug 17, 2013
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I put my hard drive with windows 7 already installed into a dell optilex 760, but when I turn it on it gets to the 'starting windows' screen but then reboots itself! I then tried to boot from CD drive with my windows 7 disk but it tells me the selected boot device not availble - strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics. I have no idea what to do next! Thanks for reading.
 
Solution
where did the hdd come from, if its from a different pc then that happens since it wasnt installed for the specefic pc. i think win8 changed that, i know i did do a drive swap with windows 8 installed and it worked but it was during the dev/consumer previews. also linux lets you do that. anyway its weird that it wont let you install windows from cd, is it an oem copy, did it come with a different pc?

chairsgotoschool

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Oct 6, 2012
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where did the hdd come from, if its from a different pc then that happens since it wasnt installed for the specefic pc. i think win8 changed that, i know i did do a drive swap with windows 8 installed and it worked but it was during the dev/consumer previews. also linux lets you do that. anyway its weird that it wont let you install windows from cd, is it an oem copy, did it come with a different pc?
 
Solution

Sharpy963

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Aug 17, 2013
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Hi there and thanks for the reply, yeah the HDD is from a different PC (old pc to my new one). It's a retail copy of windows 7 ultimate 64 bit, it boots okay from my old PC, but with the new one it tells me the selected boot device is not availble? You also mentioned I can install windows 8 on one computer and it will work if I put the HDD in my new one, so if I install windows 8 on my old computer and put the HDD in my new one it should work right?
 

chairsgotoschool

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Oct 6, 2012
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i dont know if windows 8 still does that, when i did it windows 8 was still in dev/consumer preview (around 6months before release) and it might have been a little feature to make it easier since the previews are not meant to be permanent operating systems. whenever i have issues installing an os i just install ubuntu then install windows, i dont know why but it always seems to work for me. is the cd clean and everything its weird that it wont let you boot from cd, also check your bios to see if boot from cd is disable.
 

Sharpy963

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Aug 17, 2013
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Yes the CD is clean, it works fine on my other computer, when I go into BIOS the boot sequence order is,
Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive
Onboard SATA Hard drive
SATA0-WDC WD3200AAKS-75L9A0

Also if I click on drives, it only has the option to enable or disable the SATA-0 drive, should this be where the CD drive should be?

 

chairsgotoschool

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Oct 6, 2012
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if its a sata drive. your mobo probably has more than 1 sata port, around 5 usually so it would be 0-4 (assuming its 5) so if its plugged in the first port then its 0 and second port is 1 and so on but i think it just blank if there is no drive. make sure they are all enabled (all the ones you have a hard drive or cd drive) plugged into.

if its only showing 1 sata drive either your cd drive is using the old ribbon cables (called pata i think) or there is something wrong, cd drive not getting power or not plugged in all the way.

have you ever had issues with this cd drive before? you could most likely swap it for the one in your other pc.

is this a brand new pc? has it ever had a windows install before?