Windows 7 32-bit cloned C Drive to SSD, will not boot

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I wonder if anyone can help, I have installed a new SSD 120GB drive, cloned the 78.13GB C drive to the new SSD using Easus Partition Master 9.1.1, made the drive active & bootable but it will still not boot from this drive which has the letter D as default, I can get it to go to the screen before the log on screen but not where I enter my username & password, it just reboots from here. I see Fred Langa from Windows Secrets installed similar to his laptop (mine is a desktop) and he said he even moved the “normally hidden 100MB System Reserved partition”, I can’t see this partition on either the C or D clone but it boots fine from the C Drive. This is my first time in the lounge but have been a Langalist & now Windows Secrets subscriber since Windows 98, not bad with computers but no expert, any help would be welcome.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

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any help would be welcome.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Sid,
Hello… you say that you can’t boot the SSD…how then can you see that the SSD has no 100MB partition? “D” will only be able to be seen and not booted … You might be able to Dual boot the same OS if you were to use EasyBCD and configured it so ..Just a guess as i have not tried to dual boot a Clone.:cheers: Regards Fred

PS: If it’s a Clone you can’t boot from it until you remove the former. Only one Active and “Bootable” at a time.

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I agree Fred, Making a Clone of the original HD to the SSD does not give a dual boot MBR as one would have on a second drive or partition, so the original drive would have to be removed to allow the MBR on the cloned SSD drive to become active. Understand I have not tried this scenario, but it does make sense. In my dual boot scenarios, installation to a 2nd drive or partition adds an entry in the MBR, but Cloning does not.

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Ted, hello. You wrote :
>>> installation to a 2nd drive or partition adds an entry in the MBR, but Cloning does not.

You are right, a clone is just that, not a booting device until you remove the master, the source. I wonder if it would be possible to re-asign a HD letter ?? It would have to be done in DOS as the active HD can not be renamed.

I have tried booting from a USB clone but somehow, it finds a C: reference somewhere and goes back to the main one. Such is life in cyberspace.

BIOS is the boss.

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Thanks for all your help guys, finally got it to boot after doing a repair to the startup with windows disc but now it logs me on and tells me it is not a legal copy of windows.
windowssystem32winload.exe was missing or corrupt but now it has been repaired won’t let windows do anything. I have read horror stories before about this but at least it still lets me go into my old C drive. Any idea how to get round it now.

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Sid,
See post #2 and #3…. A “clone” Is made from the original and is the used to replace the original …not run along side of it …Regards Fred

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after cloning the system reserved partition, you have to set the partition as active. if still cannot boot, I suggest you migrate OS to SSD, this guarantees OS bootable.
You may know, SSD has this feature but is not easy guide. you can try some 3rd party tools which contains this feature, such as AOMEI Partition Assistant Home Edition. its built in migrate OS wizard works well.

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Cloning involves attaching both HD’s and transferring from one HD to another. If this did not work successfully, perhaps instead of a clone, you could create an image of the old HD, stored on a Flash drive or Ext HD, then connect the SSD and restore the Image to the SSD.

To create Images, I make a boot disk of the app that I will be using (I use Acronis True Image Home), boot to the boot disk and create the image from there. This way the Image is created outside Windows. I would then install the SSD HD and restore that Image by booting to the boot disk once again and restoring from there to the SSD.

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I will format the SSD again and try AOMEI Partition Assistant with the one-key migrate OS to SSD function then disconnect the old drive and see if she will boot this time, thanks again.

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Hi all, many thanks again for all your help. SSD running the show now after using AOMEI Partition Assistant migrate OS to SSD, would recommend this to everyone but I will have to keep in mind to disconnect to old drive on the first boot if I have to help out a mate in the future. Anyway once again PlainFred, Ted, Handcuff36, Jiongs & Hanmei cheers

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