Windows won't boot after a cloned drive to SSD.

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JuanPC

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Feb 10, 2015
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I have a multi boot XP & W7, EasyBCD, or should I say, had?
Anyway... Was working wonderful, but my SSD was too small.
I Cloned my small SSD to bigger SSD using Clonezilla... K1 option,
Everything was working great.
The Cloned SSD was working flawless.
Until decided to install both SSD at same time, and test speed with HD Tune 2.55.
Windows recognized the second SSD as same signature... And disabled it.
But i Did an stupid thing... Actually 2.
#1. Activated the second SSD to test speed. "Diskmanager".
That changed the drive letters from C: to F:, even I did not selected that partition, changed all partitions of the second SSD to other drive letters, but because I selected a harmless partition I thought C: was safe. wrong. "windows not perfect."

#2. I thought to sell the small SSD. Erased the small SSD, i can't clone again...
That would be easy...
Clone again & Drive letter change problem solved. But I can't clone again.
My mistake not to keep a backup SSD.

Problem is that the Drive letter is Fixed to F:
I need to change to C: to boot again.

Did all I could...
Swapped the Sata ports.
DVD repair console, diskpart assign letter=c to volume needed.
And it does change, but changes are temporally.,
When I reboot, goes back to F:, and does not boot.

Tried bootrec /fix mbr boot /rebuildbcd, but does not work...

Tryed to change attributes of the volume/disk to nodefaultdriveletter in diskpart.
And when rebooted, the change was permanent, and drive letter in repair DVD mode was not detected, I thought progres at least... But when assigned letter c and cleaned the nodefaultdriveletter, and rebooted, was F: again.

Autochk not found, skipping AUTOCHK.
And reboots.

Tried to edit the regedit rededt32 to change Hardware Local Machine System Mountdevices from C: to F: and F: to C:, but only changes the regedit in the X: repair ram drive created by the DVD.
Not the actual SYSTEM file in F:\windows\system32\config\system

Regedit regedt32 in DVD repair console ram drive does not load hive, grayed out.
And exporting only that single chain did not work...
When reboot, regedit is detected as corrupt or missing. "Yes I did a copy of regedit."
Haven't tested loading all regedit, modify Mountdevices and exporting all.

To solve the boot problem I Need to change drive letter to C:, or change regedit to F:
So windows thinks it was installed in F:

¿Any ideas?
Other than: "Do a clean install." "Don't waste your time."

I solved that issue once in windows XP long ago...
I think I did a clean install in other HDD and forced the clean install to change drive C: letter to other, after the clean windows was booting in other drive letter. Then installed the faulty HDD, and inside Windows changed the faulty drive letter to C:
And worked... But...
¿Is there a way to do it without another HDD?

Just command line, DVD repair mode? Don't want to wait to buy another SSD, and do a clean install.

 
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DarkSable

DarkSable

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Sep 27, 2012
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This is why you should never, ever just try to clone installs.

And why you should always be keeping backups - if you had an external drive with an acronis disk image on it, you wouldn't have any trouble at all.

As for where your system is at right now, I have a feeling that it's been messed with enough that trying to repair the pieces is going to be painful.
 
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nuts32605

nuts32605

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Dec 5, 2011
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If you copied all the partitions, you can fix the BCD in the "boot" partition to point to the new partitions. If you only copied the main windows partition, well, at least you have a backup of your data.
 
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J

JuanPC

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Feb 10, 2015
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Back to Linux...
$ sh amd-driver-installer-12-1-x86.x86_64.run --install

Listening Disco Inferno -by- The Trammps
Or should I say... Windows Inferno...? Jajajajajajaja
 
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J

JuanPC

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Found a very interesting website... But still does not solve my problem...
Waiting for a new SSD still the best option.
http://www.tested.com/tech/2341-how-to-move-your-apps-and-user-files-to-a-secondary-drive/
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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And why NOT to move your Users folder to another drive:
http://www.zdnet.com/dont-move-your-windows-user-profiles-folder-to-another-drive-7000022142/
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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How will a different SSD help?
 
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J

JuanPC

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Feb 10, 2015
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Please read the last 10 lines in the 1st post.
"I solved that issue once in windows XP long ago...
I think I did a clean install in other HDD and forced the clean install to change drive C: letter to other, after the clean windows was booting in other drive letter. Then installed the faulty HDD, and inside Windows changed the faulty drive letter to C:
And worked... But...
¿Is there a way to do it without another HDD?

Just command line, DVD repair mode? Don't want to wait to buy another SSD, and do a clean install."

Windows Diskmanager does change drive letters permanently...
Diskpart in Recovery console DVD mode does not...
Diskmanager more powerful than diskpart.
They should be the same, but they are not, diskpart is a limited version of Diskmanager.

I thought that bug was solved in Win7, but was not.

Maybe I just need to activate Administrator/Superuser in console mode to make diskpart changes permanently.
“net user Administrator /active:yes”
 
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J

JuanPC

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Feb 10, 2015
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News......

Started Windows XP Cd Recovery console mode...
F6 to load ioStore.sys Ich10R drivers from teac Panasonic USB floppy drive.
SSD was AHCI.
Inside the console...
Logged to the windows XP E:\WINDOWS
Not the W7 F:\Windows
Password.
Then did... Fixboot c:
C: was the 100MB partition Win7 needs.
"Did Map first to be shure."
Exit
& Reboot.
Windows XP worked.!!!!

But I did another really stupid mistake...
Inside XP, I tried to change C: to other letter, but XP did not allowed me.

Then I changed the Active C: to F: Primary partition,...
I should have rebooted first... Stupid mistake.
The XP partition e: was an Expanded partition...

And the XP partition was deleted.
Blue screen of death, and reboot.

The idea was to deactivate C: to change it to other, so I could change W7 to C:
But did not work.
Tempted to use those recovery softwares... But those need another drive to dump the files.

Is there an easy way to recover the partition?

GOOD NEWS & REALLY BAD NEWS.
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK.

NEWS!!!
Mini Tool Partition Recovery Works.!!!
E:\WindowsXp. Up & Running.
 
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B

bobalston

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Aug 6, 2015
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I had the same problem but with windows 10. I had used Paragon software MIgrate OS to ssd 4.0 and it did the cloaning just fine. but the cloned SSD could not be booted. I got Neosmart's Easy Recovery Essentials Windows 10 edition (for free on 8/6/2015) and the automatic fix option worked just great.

Bob
 
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R

Randyman99

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Sep 3, 2015
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Juan,
I have had this this same problem, and that is that when you clone a partition, it also clones the UUID. While you, as a human, are working off of drive letters, the OS is working with the UUID. The fact that it worked as a stand-alone disk proves that the clone was good. When you put the original SSD back in, the OS saw two partitions with the same UUID, and become confused, and can work from both partitions at the same time, which is just going to make things worse. In a perfect world, the OS would put up a dialog box and say, "Hey, there are two partitions here with the same UUID. Which one do you want me to use? And while were at it, would you like me to change the UUID on the other one, and also the boot sequence so you could boot either as an independent OS?" But, in spite of many people having this exact same problem, the OS gods have not seen it as a priority to fix this. I have run both Windows XP and Linux with this multiple UUID problem without noticing it for a while before I changed the UUID. BUt now I always change the UUID as soon as I clone. I tend to prefer Linux, and have a short script to do it, but here's instructions on how do do it (from a command window) in Windows.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Q_28381879.html

Unfortunately, you did some other things which might have messed things up further. You might need to regenerate your MBR to point to your Windows partition. I tried the Windows 10 recovery disk to do this, but it assumes you're a complete idiot and just tries to fix things without asking you what to do or telling you what it did. It didn't work for me, but I have other software to do that. Could be GPT instead of MBR.

Another thing, with modern high capacity drives, they need to be aligned on 2kByte boundaries. Some (older) cloning software doesn't do this. Try Minitool Partition Wizard. It can even realign partitions that you've already installed on the disk. It's a lifesaver.

http://download.cnet.com/MiniTool-Partition-Wizard-Free-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html

Just look out for the add-ons you get with free Windows software. I hope this helps!
 
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