New harddrive won't boot or let me boot with cd

Nailroth

Honorable
Feb 17, 2013
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10,630
Hey, i have an really old laptop that the harddrive crashed on, just loaded into windows repair and sat there for hours and nothing happend. I want to use this laptop as a "server" for my teamspeak to keep my machine safe, as of now only a few are given the information to join since it's on the main machine.
But back to the laptop, it's nothing good or anything but it will work fine just to host a ts server. since the harddrive is screwed i took another harddrive from another old computer with a busted fan and that drive has windows 7 installed but when that drive goes into the laptop and you boot up it will go through the normal then it will start looking for windows file like if you booted a new installation but then the computer shuts down and restarts and will do so until power cable and battery are removed. Is there any way i can fix this? It will not recognize the bought windows 7 cd to old to boot with my usb drives i have windows vista and xp boot installed on.

is there hope or should i just go out and buy a new cheap computer?
 

Nailroth

Honorable
Feb 17, 2013
76
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10,630
I know it can run windows 7 i have fixed it up once but then the harddrive crashed and i was hoping to get windows xp on it instead but my burner crashed on the main machine so i can't burn down that to a cd and the computer is to old to support usb booting. it's atleast 15 years old. but maybe i can formate it on the main machine and then put it back into the laptop. going to try that later today.