Can't get a samsung NP300E5E to work correctly. Possibly a BIOS issue?

[GregSchock]

I was given a [strike]nightmare machine[/strike] laptop by a friend, who claims he accidentally turned it off/lost power during windows updates. The computer was a samsung model NP300E5E. It's still pretty new, and I figured it'd be nice to get it running again.

The hard drive was corrupted, and couldn't boot in any way. This ruled out the possibility of using samsung's built-in recovery tools (pressing F4 at boot). I took out the HDD, put it into my desktop, and ran a disc repair utility which allowed me to pull off all the files he still wanted. After that, I reformatted the disc, and put it back into the laptop. I threw in my windows 7 OEM installation disc, and selected disc from the list of boot options. It initialized, and then when it displayed the windows 7 logo (the one that displays at startup) it froze halfway through. Best I can describe is that when the four dots allign to look like a backwards "L", the computer hangs presumably for eternity.

After fumbling around a bit, I decided to try and install windows 7 onto the disc, and see if the computer would be able to deal with it better when it was a properly formatted hard drive it was dealing with. Popped it back into my desktop, unplugged my own hard drive, and installed a fresh version of windows 7. Back into the laptop, AND... NOTHING!!!! HOORAY!

I'm thinking that this may be a result of some problem in either the BIOS or some of the drivers that interface with... things I don't understand. When I turn it on, the computer displays the samsung logo for a few seconds, then the screen goes black, the hard drive clicks, and the computer reboots. Back on the samsung screen, it stays for a few more seconds, then goes to a boot options screen with options: Hard drive, disc drive, and then two that are windows boot manager. All four options black out the screen for a moment, before returning to the same menu.

I did a chat with a samsung representative, and they told me I'd have to call a service center for re-imaging. Does anyone have any idea how to fix whatever the hell is haunting this system? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[darkbreeze]

If the hard drive is audibly clicking, it's probably failing or failed. Installing on another system usually won't work unless they have almost identical motherboard chipsets, which between a desktop and laptop, would be unusual. If they are both newer AMD or both newer Intel based systems, you might get lucky but the best result is always obtained by installing the OS with the drive in the target system.

Were you able to initially get the OS installed and the problem occurred when windows was trying to boot for the first time after installation, or did you not make it through the installation?

 

[GregSchock]

The hard drive definitely hasn't failed. When I plugged it into my own system and wiped it clean, I was able to use it as a normal 700GB volume for storage. The laptop and the desktop do not share identical chipsets, so that definitely won't work now that I think about it.
I installed the OS on my desktop then tried to move the hard drive back over. The laptop has been unable to boot for about a year, due to the computer being shut down during updates, if my friend remembers correctly.
The freezing while booting up happened the first time (and every consecutive time) I put the installation disc into the laptop. I believe it also occurs now that the OS has technically been installed on the disc.
Edit: Yep, still hanging up on the same spot.