Acer Aspire 5742 stuck in reboot loop

NanDee

My acer aspire 5742 is stuck in reboot loop.  I cannot get into setup mode, or chkdsk -- nothing but endless startups.  The acer screen with "press F2" to enter setup will appear momentarily, and then disappear.  I get the blue screen of death for a few seconds, it will shut down - I can hear the HD.  Then within seconds it starts to boot again, lights flashing, "press F2" appears, etc. 

 

Pressing F2 does nothing.  Pressing ShiftF8 does nothing. 

Cannot boot from CD - tried that - nothing happens.

 

I replaced HDD and it booted up wonderfully the first time and we kept laptop on for a month or so, never shutting it off.  This is inconvenient though, if you want to take it with you somewhere.

 

how do I know if it's a Windows 7 problem or a failing motherboard?  I ran an Intel diagnostic on the processor and it passed the test.  I have also run defrag and chkdsk before changing the HDD.  Since I have new SSD we know it's not that.

 

Thanks for helping.

IronFly

so it's on bootloop even with the new HDD/SSD?

or it works with the new HDD/SSD?