Solved! After restoring to a new SSD, it only boots once - after that, it fails shortly into the Windows 7 boot in a continuous cycle

[RalphTheCow]

I used AOMEI backupper and restore. It runs fine on the first boot to the SSD, but after shutting down and restarting it fails in a continuous cycle. An older Dell D630 laptop. Very strange.

 

[heymrdj]

I used AOMEI backupper and restore. It runs fine on the first boot to the SSD, but after shutting down and restarting it fails in a continuous cycle. An older Dell D630 laptop. Very strange.

What kind of error are you getting on the cyclic reboot? Are any updates installing during that first boot? Drivers installing and then asking for a reboot? Is the image created coming from a mechanical disk and then getting restored to the SSD?

 

[RalphTheCow]

What kind of error are you getting on the cyclic reboot? Are any updates installing during that first boot? Drivers installing and then asking for a reboot? Is the image created coming from a mechanical disk and then getting restored to the SSD?

It is only seconds past seeing the Loading Windows, so there is no error message. Yes, it was from a mechanical HDD to a new SSD. I restored again with the exact same results.

 

[Steltek]

First, do you have the most recent BIOS installed? And, second, in the BIOS is the SATA mode set to ATA or AHCI?

 

[RalphTheCow]

First, do you have the most recent BIOS installed? And, second, in the BIOS is the SATA mode set to ATA or AHCI?

Good questions! Not even close on the BIOS, A02 installed vs A17 latest, so I'll do that - thanks! SATA is on ATA.

 

[Steltek]

The latest BIOS is A19, dated 07/16/2013.

The fact that it is in ATA mode (for the older style ATA drives) is probably what is causing the reboots. The system has a driver installed that is expecting an old style ATA boot device (the existing hard drive) while you are trying to boot it from a SATA device (the SSD). The problem is that just changing the setting in the BIOS is not be enough - you have to edit the registry to activate the AHCI driver in Windows then change the setting in the BIOS, or run a repair install of Windows 7 atop the SSD after setting the AHCI setting in the BIOS.

EDIT:

Found these old instructions I had saved -- if you are getting the SSD to boot once, I'd image the SSD, boot it up, make the registry changes, then restart and change the BIOS setting to ACHI. I wouldn't do them on the original hard drive so you don't mess up the original installation if it doesn't work:

Change to AHCI mode from ATA/IDE mode:

In Regedit:

1. Exit all Windows-based programs.
2. Press [Win] + R or take the RUN option from the start menu.
3. Now type Regedit there and press Enter Key to open up the Registry Editor Window. (If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.)
4. Locate and then click the following registry sub key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci

5. In the right pane right-click Start in the Name column and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 0 [3 is default], and then click OK.
7. On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
8. Restart your computer
9. Go to UEFI/BIOS and enable AHCI, Save & Reboot
10. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.

 

[RalphTheCow]

Thanks, Steltek! I'll give all that a shot!

Oops, for some reason I now have too many partitions because apparently the multiple restores keep creating 350 MB partitions. So first I need to fix that.

BTW, what OS do you think I should replace Windows 7 with? It sounds like W10 is not really supported by Dell so might be difficult, so I was thinking Linux. Ubuntu seems like the safe route, but Puppy Linux runs wonderfully on it, but I don't know how secure that is.

 

[RalphTheCow]

It worked! The registry setting was already at 0, but changing the BIOS to AHCI fixed it right up. Thanks, Steltek!

 

[Steltek]

Any time.

AOEMI probably changed the registry on the clone during the hard drive cloning process as it is a known change that needs to be made going from an ATA drive to an SSD. The fact that it was initially booting was probably a clue to that we missed.

Any of the major Linux distros will probably run. Linux Mint XFCE might be another option as well as it is a decently light distro (though obviously not at light as Puppy).

If Win7 is running well on the laptop, Win10 will probably not be any worse. Use the Win7 drivers here for any drivers that the Win10 install misses. The link supposes you are installing 64 bit Windows - if you run 32 bit, you will need to search them out. If you use Dell Quickset, my old notes say you need at least version 8.2.20. The link above contains a link to Quickset x64, you'd need to search for Quickset 8.2.20 for x86 if you are running 32 bit.

The D630 originally only claimed a limit of 4GB (2x2GB) of memory, but some are known to work well with either 4GB (2x2GB modules), 6GB (2GB module+ 4GB module) or 8GB of memory (2x4GB modules) - there are multiple motherboards and each works with a different memory total. The best way to determine if your machine supports more than 4GB of memory is to use Crucial's memory scanner tool to determine what your motherboard supports. Make sure you have BIOS A19 installed before you run it (memory limits were changed in one of them to fix booting problems). If you have to upgrade memory, I very dimly recall upgrading a compatible one to 8GB once -- if I remember right, you have to remove the keyboard to get to the 2nd memory slot maybe? Check Dell's support docs to see for sure.

 

[Shmee]

You could likely do the free upgrade to 10 if you want, depending on how much RAM your system has, That way you wouldn't need to reinstall. Though it may be wise to switch to a light Linux as mentioned, something like Lubuntu or Puppy, which you are already using? I remember using Puppy way back in the day, when refurbishing super old computers to donate to charity.

 

[RalphTheCow]

You could likely do the free upgrade to 10 if you want, depending on how much RAM your system has, That way you wouldn't need to reinstall. Though it may be wise to switch to a light Linux as mentioned, something like Lubuntu or Puppy, which you are already using? I remember using Puppy way back in the day, when refurbishing super old computers to donate to charity.

Yes, I have been running puppy on live cd for a year or two on a pentium 4 grandpa box and it out performs the permanent lubuntu by a mile! It is lightning fast! Amazing how that can be! And I used gparted on it to delete partitions last night, so it is great!
Oops, with only 2gb of ram w10 may be a problem. I was actually thinking of doing dual boot with a light Linux.
BTW, the fix is not working this morning. I thought for sure that I could reboot a couple times last night. I can still upgrade the BIOS from a17 to a19 but I am not optimistic.

 

[Steltek]

You might check the BIOS to see if the SATA mode change is sticking. If it is not, you may need to replace the laptop's CMOS battery (especially if it has never been replaced on a laptop that old).

Honestly, with 2GB of memory (unless you plan to upgrade it), were it me I'd just stick with Linux. Lots less fuss, and it will still be useable.

 

[RalphTheCow]

You might check the BIOS to see if the SATA mode change is sticking. If it is not, you may need to replace the laptop's CMOS battery (especially if it has never been replaced on a laptop that old).

Honestly, with 2GB of memory (unless you plan to upgrade it), were it me I'd just stick with Linux. Lots less fuss, and it will still be useable.

Yeah, I think I’ll try installing just Linux for now. The change is sticking though. But the registry had a 3 in it this restore, so I changed to 0 but it made no difference. I always seem to be stuck in The Twilight Zone!

 

[fire400]

Win7
Update it, image it, and take it offline and disable the Ethernet adapter and extract the WiFi card.

Linux (tons of different, community supported, versions)
Lots of flexibility. Fast to install. And.. free

Win8.1 would be fine on the x32 version on 2GB RAM, while seeing 3GB on a 4GB SODIMM setup.
But that x32 OS environment would need to be almost fully stripped down..

Chrome OS (imitation-wanna-be)

How to Install Chrome OS on Any PC and Turn It Into a Chromebook

Want to turn any old computer into a Chromebook? Google doesn't provide official builds of Chrome OS for anything but official Chromebooks, but there are ways you can install the open-source Chromium OS software or a similar operating system.

www.howtogeek.com

--

Latitude D630 from 2007?
CPU is ... a ~C2D-T7300
Wouldn't even be worth running Win10 x32 on it.. (lol...)

--

I've seen Win10 attempted on Celerons dating into 2017 (ten years later on the lower-end hardware, but not the lowest end)

Example:
HP 15-bs234wm 15.6" Laptop Intel Pentium N5000 1.1GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Windows 10
Upgrade: 8GB RAM total (single SODIMM), thermal compound on HS (no FAN design), and SATA600 SSD replacing HDD

Website:

HP 15.6" Laptop, Intel Pentium N5000, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Windows 10, 15-bs234wm, Red - Walmart.com

Buy HP 15.6" Laptop, Intel Pentium N5000, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Windows 10, 15-bs234wm, Red at Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

3.1 out of 5 stars (not 5/5), for those with "Dark Reader" on Google Chrome or dark theme-colored browsers.
(reviews are kind of funny..)

It ran fine on the upgrades, but barely made it to "acceptable performance on web browsing"... but the OS environment had to be stripped down as much as possible before anything else.
And the computer needed to stay running for a few hours after updating drivers, just to hold down its own OS indexing, throughout.

Edit:
ThinkPad T420s (i5M-2nd gen) on eBay for $50 will run Windows 10 perfectly fine, and have upgrade path to 16GB RAM and even take a mSATA SSD, and can even run Windows XP if you're desperate for native-legacy.

 

[RalphTheCow]

Oh well, even if I can't seem to get Windows to boot up on the SSD, at least the ancient computer with a dog slow processor and only 2 GB of memory runs fantastically with Puppy Linux. That dog slow hard drive was killing it!