Windows won't load

[Eric713]

Novice here. The factory hard drive on my HP laptop crapped out a few days ago. I picked up a new Seagate and the sales associate said Windows would load up normally upon installation. After installing the new hard drive, it passed the diagnotic checks, but no sign of Windows. On an old, yet still functioning laptop I followed the online instructions for downloading Windows 10 to a USB drive and arranging the boot order so USB is primary. When I plugged the USB drive into my ailing HP, it was encouraging that the Windows logo appeared and I was able to select installation preferences. But everything would immediately freeze once the actual installation attempted to start. I tried this about six times, all with the same result. As a test, I removed the hard drive and dropped it in yet another old laptop that's been lying around. This test was successful, as I was able to install Windows 10 from the USB drive. A new 'Windows' folder appeared in the C: drive list. Now that I had Windows loaded onto the new hard drive, I put it back into my HP. It has again passed the memory and hard drive tests. In the Boot Options menu I have the following selected: Legacy diabled/Secure Boot enabled and UEFI Boot Order with OS boot Manager first.

Upon normal start up, I see the HP logo and an endless spinning circle beneath. Powering down and starting back up in the F9 Boot Options menu confirms OS boot Manager and pressing Enter resulted in a screen showing the HP logo and 'Preparing Automatic Repair' appeared for about 10 seconds, followed by an endless black screen. So I have a brand new and functioning hard drive with Windows 10 installed, and what I believe to be the correct boot options enabled, yet Windows doesn't start up as expected.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Huffer]

The hard drive was blank when you bought it so not sure where the salesman thought Windows was going to come from when you installed it.

And now you used the hard drive and your usb stick to install Windows 10 on an old laptop and then you stuck that hard drive in your "ailing" laptop. You can't do it that way althogh that did confirm there is nothing wrong with the usb stick or the new hard drive. 

 So you had Windows 10 running on the old "ailing" laptop before the hard drive crashed? Was it doing anything else weird. I suspect you have something else going on such as bad memory or maybe even a bad motherboard. 

Can you get into diagnostics by tapping F2 as you power up? 

[Eric713]

Thanks for your response.  Prior to pulling out the original hard drive, everything was running incredibly slow - giving an appearance of complete unresponsiveness, then all keystrokes and mouseclicks I'd made would "catch up" at once.  I ran a system quick check and the Hard Drive Short DST check failed, leading me to purchase a new one.  Currently, the Memory Test and Hard Drive Check from the F2 menu are both passing when run.  The BIOS main menu lists Windows 8.1 as the factory installed OS.  I did the upgrade to 10 when it came out and I was running 10 when everything went haywire.   I'm not sure if this means anything, but during my attempts to install Windows on the ailing laptop via USB, I didn't get the screen asking for a product key.  I did get that prompt, which I bypassed, when installing Windows on my test laptop.  Additionally, I've tried to pull all the files from the faulty hard drive using a USB to SATA/IDE adapter and all attempts have failed.