Windows 10: Switched (cloned) to new hard drive; only boots w/ old one plugged in

Hi,

I just bought a new 2tb HDD to replace my ancient 160gb one. Since I'm overall very happy w/ my Windows 10 installation I decided to clone instead of install fresh and used Macrium Reflect to clone the drive. Upon switching from the old to the new one, I was disappointed to encounter a bluescreen boot error, after the Windows logo and spinning symbol had been displaying for a few seconds: Error 0xc00000e, system_service_exception. Trying to boot into any variety of safe mode gives the same result. I didn't think this was an MBR issue based on how far into the boot process it happened, but I tried repairing / rebuilding the MBR anyway and it didn't change the problem.

The weird thing is that when I plugged in my old drive to boot to it and troubleshoot, my system actually booted to the new, clone drive, and it works perfectly - exactly like the old one did - but it only works like this with the old drive plugged in.

See this image: Imgur

Obviously the new drive is the larger C:, which is correctly flagged as system, active, primary, etc. D: is the old drive. (Before I cloned and switched, the old drive was C.)

I suspect the issue might have to do with the un-lettered 450mb recovery partition I didn't clone over from the old hard drive, but I'm not sure. Everything looks to me like the C: drive should boot on its own, but it just doesn't. I'd appreciate any insight into this. Thank you!

:)

 

installing a ssd drive

1. Clone hard drive to new SSD.

2. When finished with cloning shut down computer.

3. Take out old hard drive and install SSD.

4. Boot computer.

 

I'm putting in a new hard drive, how can I get the new hard drive to boot to Windows10?

If you can boot the pc (with the old hard drive) & you have a spare hard drive caddy for the new one then you can use Macrium Reflect free to clone the hard drive to the new one, this will remove the need to reinstall all files & folder & install all drivers.

 

It is not the recovery partition that is the main issue. Your boot sectors are on the wrong drive.

This should sort it out,

1) Disconnect old HDD.

2) Boot from Macrium Rescue Drive, select restore tab, and click "fix windows boot problems", then it should list your C drive. If not, stop and come back for more advice.

3) Then click next, finish and boot sectors will be rebuilt.

4) Set pc to boot from new HDD in bios.

5) boot pc and check it is working ok.

6) Now the slightly tricky part is the Recovery Partition is on the wrong drive. Windows does not actually need that unless you decided to reset your PC. However, as you use Macrium, you can simply create an image backup of your C drive, or reinstall from scratch using the standard MS iso anyway. On my tablets, I always delete that partition and use image backups to an external drive instead.

You can backup and restore the partition to the disk with C drive using Macrium, by shrinking the C drive but you have to do something else to 'connect' it. TBH not really worth the effort.

7) reconnect old HDD, backup data temporarily to new HDD, and format old HDD, then copy data back.

Finally, I strongly advise you shrink the C drive significantly e.g. to 300GB or so, and create a large data partition. That way when you need to make an image backup of the C drive, it will be a lot smaller, and can be recovered independently of the data.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the help.

I followed your instructions using the recovery drive and repairing boot problems. That completed successfully, but I run into the same Windows error when trying to boot the drive.

I reconnected the old drive and realized that selecting the new drive to boot to from BIOS results in the same problem. Now I can only seem to boot to the old drive, so basically its like the C: and D: letters have just flipped around in the image above. Not sure why I was able to boot to the new drive with the old one plugged in before.

*Huh

 

Run msconfig, select boot tab and post image of results.

I think the issue has changed now we have repaired boot sectors for new drive.

Does it boot if only new drive is connected (I did say to disconnect old drive first).

Before, it was still getting boot info from old drive and could then start new drive

You could try physically swapping the drive connections.

 

Okay, so -

I did disconnect the old drive per your instructions before to be clear. Currently, the only way the system starts is starting the old OS on the old drive. I had previously got the new OS on the new drive to start, but only with the old drive plugged in as well (the status you can see in the image in my first post), but I can't get that to work now.

I thought the issue might be some glitch with the image, so I re-imaged the drive, without changing the size of the partitions this time, just copied them both over. Disconnected the old drive, tried to boot to the newly imaged one. Same error, no change. Then I went through the steps again of using the recovery drive to repair boot errors and tried again; same error.

So here's my current boot status per your instructions: https://i.imgur.com/qOFNHuE.png

Here's my drive management: https://i.imgur.com/NYIi0HA.png

And the error I get when I try to boot the new drive in any situation: https://i.imgur.com/KKXVfSN.jpg

Maybe I should try another copy service such as Clonezilla?

 

Question do you have a USB Memory stick handy?? If you do, then you can use Macrium Reflect's rescue app, install it unto your usb stick, boot to it, then use Macrium reflect Repair Boot Files on your new SSD......might take a while. This is a free program.

 

Yes, have done this twice. Doesn't change anything.

 

Just keeps getting more frustrating...

I figured out that startup repair and some console commands from the windows RE weren't working properly because the BIOS was configured to not use UEFI. I ran into some trouble enabling that (disabled both onboard and video card video output at first), but got it working. Startup repair ran for a long time and finally determined it couldn't do anything. The log showed a bunch of 0x0 / no error messages and ended with "Error code 0x490" / possible driver issue.

I also manually rebuilt the bootloader following the longer part of this guide (Fixing the Windows Bootloader via the setup DVD). It completed successfully and Windows starts and encounters the same error. I'm pretty much certain this isn't a bootloader issue of any sort at this point. It seems like there's some sort of driver issue migrating from my old hard drive to my new one. They're both SATA 3 HDDs so I'm not sure what it could possibly be.

Installing Windows 10 fresh also looks like it could be impossible because my license is an insider license migrated from Windows 7 and I don't have an actual license key to enter.

I tried making a new clone with Clonezilla but apparently the linux kernel doesn't play well with my hardware and that won't even start.

Adding to the weirdness, when I tried to boot to an SD card I had installed Clonezilla on at one point, instead of starting that at all, Windows started correctly from my NEW drive again, with no apparent problems. The same drive / OS that glitches out every time I try to boot to it directly.

Can't wrap my head around this...

 

You have to get that bootmgr on that drive. Try this and adjust the drive letters as required.

Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

I can try this but I don't see how it could possibly be the problem:

1) Windows already begins to start up, as I've said above. It just fails to start completely.
2) I cloned the entire drive anyway
3) I've already repeatedly rebuilt the boot manager in Windows RE

I've seen many kinds of boot manager problems before and none of them occur after you already see the Windows logo and the system already begins to boot up.

 

But if the boot process gets disrupted, that would suggest a bootmgr problem - wouldn't it.

 

Fair enough - I may be / hopefully am wrong. But I used that tool to move the boot manager from C (just going to use that to refer to "old drive") to D ("new drive"). Now, when both drives are in, telling the BIOS to boot D results in the OS on C being booted. And when C is removed, D gives a good old-fashioned boot error (because the boot manager is now referring to a drive that isn't there).

I'll try repairing the boot manager again with the RE. I'm expecting the best-case scenario with that is going back to the type of error I was getting before, but maybe it'll be different.