New Hard Drive Replacement won't boot on its own after hard drive transfer

How did you 'transfer everything' ?

No, not even a little bit.

Does the original drive still exist with the original OS?

Reattach the original HDD and boot the computer with it. You're going to need to install cloning software to transfer the OS.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277484-32-best-disk-cloning-software

The only other scenario is to do a fresh Windows install with the new HDD.

OK....put it back in, disconnect the new drive, and verify that it actually boots from the old system

If it does, then we can proceed.

Why not use drive cloning tool?

He tried that eventually. It failed.
The various cloning tools are not always 100%.

Maybe OP just needs more patience. MAYBE a different cloning tool.

If you don't have it yet, get Acronis True Image WD Edition free from the WD website. It includes cloning, but only to a WD-made HDD, which is what you have.

I had to clone a HDD that gave out bad SMART messages. During the cloning, I kept getting messages from the software that it had encountered an error reading the Source unit. I simply chose the response to keep on working and ignore the error. After a LOT of these I chose instead to tell it to ignore ALL errors and keep on working until it finished. So it did. Thus, the cloned copy MIGHT have some bad data in a few places, but the clone did get made.

That clone on a new HDD has been working flawlessly for a few years now. If it got any errors, it was not in important files. In fact, the errors might all have been in places not even in use by any file.

My point is, with the right cloning software you have the options to ignore an error and continue, and maybe even to use one command to ignore all errors and clone whatever it can.

And my point is: why port known errors on to a new drive? If during the process it is coughing up errors, why continue? Why bring that over to the new drive? It may be inconsequential files, or it might be something critical that doesn't appear for two weeks.

Patience? No. Either it works the first time, or wipe and reinstall.

OK, what USAFRet says is true - more cautious, but a very good way to avoid the risk of copying errors. If OP is willing to do a complete re-install (says he / she is), this will work well. In fact, since the old HDD is still working and you CAN successfully copy "everything" from it, you should lose nothing. When you use the Copy operation, it will not copy any Bad Sectors, so that's how you avoid unrecognised errors.

Remove the old HDD so only the new one is installed, then do the fresh Install on it, then Install all your application software on it. Yes, you must Install those, not just copy the old apps from the old HDD, so the new Registry has required info on all those apps. Then you re-install the old HDD temporarily and copy all your old data files over. Un-install the old HDD and set it aside in a safe place just in case you forgot something.

AFTER you have your machine working well and are completely satisfied that you have all your old files copied over you can decide what to do with the old unit. Some would just throw it out on the argument that it is old and has shown some errors, so more are coming soon. Alternatively, you can download and use a set of HDD diagnostic utilities from Seagate, the makers of your old HDD - they are called Seatools. Install them on your machine, re-install the old HDD, and run the tests to determine just how much is wrong on the old unit. If you decide only minor things are wrong and can be ignored, I suggest you use the Zero Fill utility on the OLD drive ONLY - make SURE which drive you fill! It will destroy ALL the contents of that unit! But it will also force an internal routine that tests and "corrects" (actually, replaces bad sectors with good spares) the drive so that it is almost like brand new and working well. That is, of course, IF the other tests have already told you there is not much wrong to fix. Once you do that, it is a new empty drive that will need to be Initialized so you can use it for data.

A final note: that Seatools utility package is not really suitable for use with HDD's NOT from Seagate. So if you do this and then decide the old HDD is junk so that you no longer have any Seagate HDD around, just un-install Seatools from your system.

Just make sure to choose a best answer.