I've got a Dell Latitude D420 laptop that hangs immediately after post with a blank screen and a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. It hangs long before Windows even begins to load. This behavior started after installing a new hard drive. The new hard drive does show up in the BIOS and displays the correct size.
The machine still boots up to the old (original) hard drive although that hard drive is failing and produces errors in the event viewer and performance issues.
I've tried reinstalling Windows on the new hard drive. It copies files to the new drive with no problem but then reboots and hangs.
I've also tried using Acronis TrueImage to copy an image of the original hard drive to the new hard drive. The image copies without a problem and all the files are readable on my desktop. However, the machine still hangs immediately after post. I even tried fixmbr and fixboot on it and it still hangs.
The original hard drive is a Toshiba MK3008GAL (HDD1642). The replacement drive I'm attempting to use is a Samsung HS040HB. Both of these drives work well on my desktop when connected to my ZIF-40 to USB enclosure/adapter.
Dell diagnostics doesn't find any problems when I run it with the new hard drive installed.
It looks to me like the new hard drive I got is just plain incompatible but is there some kind of BIOS setting that could possibly cause this early hanging problem?