[SOLVED] Cloned Drive - Not booting to Windows 10

[Tizerak]

I have cloned a drive that is in QPT format from a HDD to SSD. The device is an HP Pavilion x360 with Windows 10. I have checked the SSD in Disk Management on another device and the partition is active. I do not see anything out of place in BIOS.
It will not boot to Windows. When I turn it on it goes to a recovery screen Automatic Repair - "Your PC did not start correctly", if I reboot it will just loop to this message over and over. I am trying to preserve the programs/data on this drive because a lot of it is expensive, licensed software and also because this is bugging me and there should be a way to fix it.

I have tried the following:

1. Startup repair from recovery mode just leads to "Startup Repair couldn't repari your PC"
2. Trying to boot to Safe Mode presents the same initial problem of "PC did not start correctly"
3. Trying any other option from Recovery Mode > Advanced Options > Startup Settings just ends up back at the "did not start correctly" message.
4. Trying either Uninstall Updates option in Recovery Mode leads to failure.
5. If I try System Recovery I get "Recovery" "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" "A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed" "Error code: 0xc000000 e"
6. There are no system restore points on the cloned drive to test.

The following is command prompt stuff I've tried within Recovery Mode off of a Win 10 install USB:

1. CHKDSK <drive> /r - sees nothing wrong
2. Using DISKPART to see that the drive is healthy, select it, assign it a letter, exit DISKPART, switch to the drive, bootrec /fixboot
3. I've tried disabling auto recovery: bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled No - but this just leads to another Recovery screen of: The operating system couldn't be loaded because the system registry file is missing or contains errors, File: \WINDOWS\System32\config\system, Error code: 0xc00000225
4. sfc /scannow - "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"
5. sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\windows - same error

I'm currently attempting to use DISM to recover the drive with an install.wim file on a thumb stick, but it's quite the headache in a Windows PE environment.

 

[Nemesia]

Hi Tizerak.

Was the cloning successful?

Did you unplug all drives and only booted with the SSD after the cloning was successful? You cannot boot with both drives connected after the cloning. It has to be only with the SSD with the HDD unplugged and the cloning needs to be redone if this was not how you did it.

 

[USAFRet]

What are the specific drives involved?

At the end of the clone process, did you:
Power off
Physically disconnect the old drive
Power up and allow the system to boot from the new?

 

[Tizerak]

Hi Tizerak.

Was the cloning successful?

Did you unplug all drives and only booted with the SSD after the cloning was successful? You cannot boot with both drives connected after the cloning. It has to be only with the SSD with the HDD unplugged and the cloning needs to be redone if this was not how you did it.

Yes... clone was successful, SSD is in a laptop by itself.

 

[Tizerak]

What are the specific drives involved?

At the end of the clone process, did you:
Power off
Physically disconnect the old drive
Power up and allow the system to boot from the new?

Yes.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes.

A successful clone does NOT need all that fixing. No Recovery, DISM, chkdsk, etc, etc...
It should run 100% by itself.

If you return the system back to original config, does it work properly?

 

[Tizerak]

A successful clone does NOT need all that fixing. No Recovery, DISM, chkdsk, etc, etc...
It should run 100% by itself.

If you return the system back to original config, does it work properly?

It's a clone from a failing HDD to a SSD. It was cloned sector by sector. Everything is on the new SSD except this issue booting into Windows. It looks like the configuration system registry database is corrupt so I'm looking into solutions for that issue.

 

[USAFRet]

It's a clone from a failing HDD to a SSD. It was cloned sector by sector. Everything is on the new SSD except this issue booting into Windows. It looks like the configuration system registry database is corrupt so I'm looking into solutions for that issue.

Ah....
That just transferred the fail to a new drive.

Cloning can be great, when conditions are perfect.
When they are not, like here....even a sector by sector clone is not the solution.

Cloning, no matter how done, does not fix a failing source.