On 26/01/2016 20:23, Charlie Pridham wrote:
I recently managed to salvage my old computer onto a windows 7 machine,
all is working and good!

However the experience has left me nervous of having no back up machine
sitting switched off but ready to go with windows 7 on it, and I thought
it would be handy to test run my backups to make sure they worked.

Your simplest option would be to buy a secondhand refurbished Win7 box
from the likes of Morgan and test it and install your software ready and
then keep it safe in a nice dry cupboard until needed. eg.

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/c/6...ows-7-Systems/

I thought I would resurrect my old machine, started off renewing the
hard drive but that didnt clear the problem (it is not going through the
boot sequence tries to start windows but dumps you into the repair
screen and then retries and keeps going in cycles) so I assumed it must
be the motherboard or processor, so I have just fitted a new one of
those but it still has exactly the same problem.

The simplest test for whether it is bad memory (common and worth
reseating it as a precaution) is to run a Linux based memory tester like
Memtest86 and see if the PC can boot from a bootable CD and run for an
extended period. It will also catch board level PSU faults.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86

If the PC still crashed horribly running a different OS from a CD/DVD
then you know it is a hardware fault. I am afraid Windows is
sufficiently inclined to self destruct that you often cannot infer
anything much from a Win7 boot failure beyond "something is wrong".

I should say the Hard drive (s) I have tried all work fine and boot up
on other machines

Transplanting hard drives randomly between machines isn't a good idea.
Even PCs that are nominally identical and from the same batch sometimes
have subtly different driver requirements.

Can a dodgy power supply cause these sort of problems? if not what is it
likely to be?

Dodgy capacitors in the memory can cause erratic problems. They tend to
go bad after 5-10 years. Again a memory stress test will find that.

At this stage I realize it would have been easier (and quicker) to just
buy a second working machine but I was lured into this course of action
and am now being stubborn and dont want to be beaten!

My fixation in windows 7 is just because its the last version that my
Label station printer software works on and changing to the new software
would involve rewriting thousands of Labels

Having a hot spare is wise if you depend on it for business.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown