Invalid Hardware configuration

[Grimes]

Hey everyone, I'm brand new to the form. I'd say I know a little above the average user, but not much more. I understand this might be an easy problem for most of ya'll, but please don't call me a moron, it's just not my field of expertise...Yet, hopefully. Well, I'll start from the beginning.

A little while ago I had some people over and of course their was alcohol involved. Well, one thing led to another and I ended up dropping the laptop while running. My first hunch was the hard drive of course and I finally switch out the Hard drive with my other laptop. After I did that it said I had an invalid hardware configuration.

I'm not exactly sure what I need to do to resolve this problem. A little insight and advice would be appreciated, or perhaps a link or resource I may be able to read up on myself to figure it out.

Thank you for your time and effort.

 

[MrUnknown]

Not to be rude, but this forum is for technicians to help other technicians who do computer repair for a living or at the very least, working towards doing it. This isn't a general help forum to pick the minds of people who do this for a living.

That being said, in most cases you can not just swap out a HDD to another computer and expect it to work. Take the error as it says, it is an invalid hardware configuration compared to what it had before. You will probably have to reinstall.

 

[Grimes]

Well thank you for the help. I understand that this is a forum for technicians, but I figured everyone had to start somewhere and thought ya'll would like to teach and expand on others knowledge. I know when I teach people something that I know I often learn new things because I've always thought of it from my perspective, and not from a fresh set of eyes. I also do plan on going into the computer field. I want to start working on computers and I figured I would begin on my own computers first so that I don't damage someone else's computer.

Anyways, back to the problem, if your still willing to help. I talked to a friend of mine and he said that it looks like the computer is not detecting the HD, but when I check my bios it seems to have found it. I ran into another problem. He says I may have to run an autodetect(which seems wrong to me, since it can already tell me how big the hd is and ever, but I'm putting it here just in case), but it seems that there is a default password on the bios(I tried dell and a couple of other randoms(like 1234 and what not) along with removing the battery from the cmos. Do you think a reformat of the drive and reinstall of windows is the fix for me, or perhaps their is another trick that I could learn from

I reread my post and it seems like I'm giving you an attitude, but assure you, I am not and I am genuinely trying to work towards getting a computer degree, but I do not like to walk into anything blind, not to mention I do not have the resources at this time to attend college immediately. I am currently studying for A+ and hope this will help kick start me. I also believe that it shouldn't be all book smart, I like to learn hands on.

Thank you for you time and effort.

 

[MrUnknown]

No, I am not taking offense to your posts. I just read your introduction and it didn't really seem like you wanted to do computer repair for a living so I was just giving a warning that if you ask a bunch of fairly "newbie"ish questions then someone might call you out on it or just ignore your posts. I just wanted you to not take it as us being rude. As I said, many people on here do it for a living and, like you, don't want to do it for free.

As for your problem, I don't believe you described it properly. When are you getting this error? The BIOS is giving it? Windows tries to boot and then displays that error? I have no idea where the error is comming from so I can't really pinpoint it out for you.

If Windows is giving it (a quick google search does not really show this error as a windows one) then, like I said, you can't just swap HDDs between computers and they work. There are ways around this but not all foolproof or you need a complete system backup to do it.

Again, you aren't very clear. You said the BIOS tells you the size of the disk, yet there is a password on it that you seem to imply you can not get past. How did you check it in the BIOS if you can not get into it? The POST screen shows the size of the HDD?

you also forgot to mention the brand/model of the laptop.

until you can figure out if it is the BIOS giving the error or Windows, then there isn't too much I can do.

 

[Grimes]

Thank you for your advice and I hope you can understand my situation. The computer is a Dell PP11L. The error is a Windows error. It ask me how I would like to boot the computer, either normal, safe mode, or using the last known working settings. I tried them all, but got no luck. I can get into bios, but only to view settings. It does not allow me to change any settings.

 

[MrUnknown]

i'd recommend a reinstall. however, if you use that HDD you swapped, you are going to lose everything you had on the other laptop.

as for your BIOS, you can give the utility in here a try:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic18780.html

 

[Grimes]

Okay, thank you. I'm planning on buying a new hd for it anyways, that way I'll have both the laptops working.

Sorry if I was on the newbish side, but I do plan on continuing an education in computer technology and I hope you will help me in the future. Who knows, maybe in a couple years I may be able to help you with something,probably not, but I'd definitely give it a shot.