Cloned Win7 from one drive to another, copying /boot/ and ending up with an invalid digital signature on Winload.exe !

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podonnell

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Nov 17, 2014
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I cloned my Win7 partition from a smaller SSD to a larger SSD, and chose to also copy the /boot/ volume.

Where I stand now is that the bigger SSD is not booting due to an invalid digital signature -- likely assume it has a fingerprint that doesn't match the serial number of the physical disk? Anyway, all my files are intact, but I cannot boot whatsoever.

I have tried repairing, fixboot, all those ideas do not work as the digital signature of this file is not changing. I'm thinking I may need to completely re-generate this winload.exe file using the fingerprint from the new, bigger SSD? However, I'm unsure how that file gets created? When installing Windows I assume.

One idea I have is to install Win7 again on the unused partition of this drive -- since the clone only used up 200gb of the drive, and I have another 200GB+ left. Then, could I possibly take the Winload.exe file created on that half of the partition and copy it to the bad partition?

I really do not want to fully reinstall Windows as I have an unreasonable amount of Windows configurations and installed programs that have registry keys and whatnot... which would not get copied over even if I pasted all the files back.

Please advise, really dying to get out of this situation and get back to Windows. Thanks!
 
Solution
USAFRet
I stopped recommending CloneZilla several years ago. One reason is the partition size issue you see. 200GB out of a 500GB drive.
Assuming the original 250GB drive is still in one piece, use this instead: Macrium Reflect

Delete all the existing partitions on the 500GB, and do the cloning again with Macrium Reflect.

And yes, you select all the partitions on that source drive.
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podonnell

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Clonezilla. Did a byte-level clone as advised, and I think my only mistake was choosing to copy the boot info as well.

Source is a 240gb SSD, Dest. is a 500GB SSD.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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I stopped recommending CloneZilla several years ago. One reason is the partition size issue you see. 200GB out of a 500GB drive.
Assuming the original 250GB drive is still in one piece, use this instead: Macrium Reflect

Delete all the existing partitions on the 500GB, and do the cloning again with Macrium Reflect.

And yes, you select all the partitions on that source drive.
 
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Solution
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podonnell

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Nov 17, 2014
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Would love to follow that, but.... Problem:

After my clone my source drive started to see some corruption, so I had to do a new install on that drive. Now the source files are only on the bigger SSD, which wont boot. I know the files are all good and made it there as I can interact with them through the new install on my old drive, it's just the /boot/ that's messed up.

So I think my only option is to find this digital signature on winload.exe at this point. Cloning back would do no good, right? Or would it, as the winload.exe fingerprint would be from the source drive?

 
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podonnell

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Nov 17, 2014
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Tried that probably 10-20 times unfortunately, I think the repair would replace missing files or attempt to fix where an OS was not listed. It seems this is really a matter of this winload.exe file having that digital signature that is untrusted.
 
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