Laptop won't boot from connected hard drive

[ScottU]

I have a presario laptop that is about 7 years old. Yesterday I attempted to turn it on, and nothing happened. I noticed the hard drive was not spinning nor were the hard drive light moving as it did to load the OS. I preceed to take the drive out and re-insert it but the same thing happened. I think took the drive out, put it in an enclosure, and connected it via usb to the laptop. I then booted the laptop up and received two options. Now I may not be accurate as to the options, but one was start windows normally or start in recovery mode.

When I start the laptop in the options start windows normally, I get a quick blue screen flash that is so quick I cannot read it, then the laptop re-starts everytime.

I select to start in recovery mode, and I get a windows screen, in a "safe" mode, and it proceeds to attempt to repair what is wrong. When It finds it can't fix the problem it gives me the option to boot in recovery mode, and select a previous state that windows was working. I choose this options, and after some time, it asks me to select my keyboard country. I then cancel this and shut the laptop down.

I am looking for any opinions as to what's going on with the laptop. The drive does work in the enclosure. I hear it moving and the light flashes on the enclosure showing that it is moving. When it's in the laptop there is nothing. I don't know if the connector on the motherboard for the laptop is fried or what.

Any suggestion are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

You cannot expect Windows to boot from an externally connected drive, it can't do that.
With the drive still in the enclosure, plug it in to a working computer and test it with SeaTools for Windows:
http/www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

(The fact that you can hear it spinning and the light flashes does not necessarily mean it's healthy).