Question Can't boot into into Windows 10 ?

[srayhan6]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop the hard drive for which is a 1TB 5400 rpm HDD, I wanted to upgrade it to a 1 TB SSD.

Instead of using Macrium Reflect to clone the drive while it was still installed on the laptop and running windows, I decided to take it out of the laptop and connect a SATA-to-USB3 cable to it and connect it to my other computer that is currently running windows 7.

I then used another SATA-to-USB cable to connect the new blank SSD hard drive using another SATA-to-USB3 cable to my computer running windows 7.

Then when I ran Macrium Reflect, the software was having a hard time cloning the drive so I figured let me go ahead and install the source hardrive back into the inspiron laptop and run windows and then I'll install Macrium Reflect on that OS and cloan the hard drive from there.

However, I think when I took the hard drive out of the laptop and connected it to my other laptop via USB3, it damaged the Master Boot record (this is my guess)......because I can no longer boot into windows.

Initially I got the "Repairing disk errors, This might take over an hour to complete" screen....after about 3 hours I got the message that Windows could not repair your issue and prompted me to go to the "Advanced Options"

In the "Advanced Options" menu I am not sure what to do from here.....I was thinking maybe the right partitions are not assigned the correct drive letters or something like that....but not really sure.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

 

[Lafong]

"Then when I ran Macrium Reflect, the software was having a hard time cloning the drive so I figured let me go ahead and install the source hardrive back into the inspiron laptop"...................

"Hard time" meaning what exactly? You gave up in mid-clone and cancelled out?

Or it finished but the result was not bootable?

Or?

 

[srayhan6]

"Then when I ran Macrium Reflect, the software was having a hard time cloning the drive so I figured let me go ahead and install the source hardrive back into the inspiron laptop"...................

"Hard time" meaning what exactly? You gave up in mid-clone and cancelled out?

Or it finished but the result was not bootable?

Or?

So I got an error from Macrium that there was an MBR present and could not clone and the cloning process stopped on its own

 

[Lafong]

Source drive is MBR or GPT?

 

[srayhan6]

Source drive is MBR or GPT?

the source drive has windows 11 installed on it my guess is that it is GPT.......appologies as I have limited knowledge in MBR vs. GPT

 

[srayhan6]

the source drive has windows 11 installed on it my guess is that it is GPT.......appologies as I have limited knowledge in MBR vs. GPT

The screen I get now when I try to load is as follows:

Automatic Repair couldn't repair you PC.
Press "Advanced options" to try other options to repair your PC or "Shut down" to turn off your PC.
Log file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

 

[srayhan6]

I only have one hard drive in the laptop with 7 volumes in the following order:

Volume ###	Ltr	Label	Fs
Volume 0	C	OS	NTFS
Volume 1	D	New Volume	NTFS
Volume 2	E	New Volume	NTFS
Volume 3		ESP	FAT32
Volume 4	F	WINRETOOLS	NTFS
Volume 5	G	Image	NTFS
Volume 6	H	DELLSUPPORT	NTFS

 

[USAFRet]

Put the system back together so that it works.
Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

 

[srayhan6]

Put the system back together so that it works.
Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

Windows does not load.....I can't get past the Advanced repair options screen

 

[USAFRet]

Windows does not load.....I can't get past the Advanced repair options screen

Even with only the original HDD?

 

[Lafong]

Even with only the original HDD?

I think so.....it seemingly got fouled during the cloning process.

Seemingly. Barring more info.

 

[USAFRet]

I think so.....it seemingly got fouled during the cloning process.

Seemingly. Barring more info.

Thats what I'm reading as well.

This may be beyond the point of no return.

But, we shall see what other details emerge.

 

[srayhan6]

Yes, I installed the original HDD back into the laptop and I get the "Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC" screen and get propted to either enter "Advanced options" or "Shut Down"

 

[srayhan6]

my thoughts is that once I took out the hard drive and connected it to another computer via USB something about the volume letter assignments got screwed up

 

[srayhan6]

is there anyway to see what are the drive letter assignments windows is looking for?

 

[Lafong]

During your excursion into Macrium land....did you make a USB flash "recovery media"?

I'm guessing you did not.

 

[USAFRet]

is there anyway to see what are the drive letter assignments windows is looking for?

The system is only looking for 2 partitions.

1 - the small boot partition. This should have no drive letter.
2 - Wherever Windows resides. This will be the C, once the system boots up.

All other partitions are irrelevant to the booting process.


There were ways to do this clone/drive swap operation easily.
But how you did it...not.

 

[USAFRet]

How much brainache is a fresh OS install?

Do a new OS install on the new SSD.
Later...much later...connect the old HDD and retrieve whatever personal docs are on it.

 

[Lafong]

Volume 5 "Image" is mildly interesting. Presumably a way to recover on a factory Dell.

But I have no idea how you make use of it at this point. Mystery Dell stuff.

If you can ever boot and get to Macrium, it might be worth an attempt at imaging rather than cloning.

 

[srayhan6]

I would really prefer to try to recover the OS on this hdd if possible....

I have tried the following troubleshooting thus far:

1. I launched the Command Prompt from the "Advanced Options" screen
2. Launched the DISKPART tool
3. Removed all the drive letters assigned to the 6 volumes
4. Then I assigned the "C" drive letter to one of the NTFS partition
5. I exited the DISKPART tool and came back to the Command Prompt
6. The I executed the "bootrec /rebuild bcd" command

I did this for each of the larger size NTFS volumes, however for all of them when I executed the "bootrec /rebuildbcd" command I got "Total identified Windows installation: 0"

 

[USAFRet]

Then I assigned the "C" drive letter to one of the NTFS partition

umm....was this the correct partition?

And really, it does not matter. Windows will make it be the C as the system boots up.

But since the bootrec fix has failed....I think all is lost.

Is there anything really special on this drive?
I understand not wanting to do a fresh OS install. But, you can flail about with trying to fix it for days or weeks.
Or, you could do a fresh OS install on the SSD and be done by this time tomorrow.

 

[srayhan6]

I really would prefer to be able to have it go back in time and start working like it was....since this is my boss's laptop....I do see the data there, just can't figure out why the windows installation is not being recognized. There is a Optane Raid drive installed I noticed in the bios...could that have something to do with it?

 

[USAFRet]

since this is my boss's laptop

oh good Lord....

So many things wrong, starting with - Why was there not a real backup of this before you started?!?


Leave that Optane RAID alone. Completely.

 

[srayhan6]

oh good Lord....

So many things wrong, starting with - Why was there not a real backup of this before you started?!?


Leave that Optane RAID alone. Completely.

......crying to my hearts content at this time....water under the bridge

 

[srayhan6]

Alright, I was able to reinstall the OS and used dell's onboard software to restore the files on the 3 partitions that were on the hard drive. Can anyone tell me how I can upgrade the HDD on this laptop to the WD Blue SSD that I bought in Best Buy?