Question Cloned OS drive won't boot ?

[Leon Zdanowicz]

Main SSD drive boots and works fine but cloned back up drive boots to blue screen. Error code OxcOOOOOOe, and missing winload.efi file.

I’ve been cloning my main drive to a backup drive every week for a couple of years. The last time I checked a result, over 6 months ago, the backup booted fine. Both discs are GMT [GPT?]. This time I get the old bs of death. I tried multiple re-clones with the same result and with a different clean SSD, and using AOEMI Pro and Maximum Macrium Reflect (freeware) program, again same result. I installed win 11 on the old backup drive and it booted fine. I than cloned it to a 3rd drive and it booted fine.

I have Norton 360 and it could not find any malware. I also tried the AOEMI backup instead of clone options again same result. I also went through the various Win 11 recovery options including command prompt, again no fix. Was interesting though that the recommended “bootrec" sequence “/fixboot” returned an “access denied" response. Tried the suggested "Disk Part" recommended fix sequences but still got the access denied response. Since the main SSD drive boots and works fine, all I can think is that there must be some missing win or boot file such as the winload.efi on my main drive being prevented from migrating to the clone. Any help would be deeply appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

Contrary to what a lot of people think, "cloning" is not a good method for backups.
It is good for changing the drive right now.

For backups like this, Imaging.


But, moving on.
A proper Clone or Image does not leave off small parts. Either it works or it fails.

Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

 

[Leon Zdanowicz]

Tried the backup options. Same result. Made a copy of the disk management screen but have never tried to attach a picture here and need some help. Looked OK though.

Captain Z. Retired USAF Retread

 

[thestryker]

Assuming secure boot is turned on you could try turning it off and seeing if it boots. If it does then you could try sfc to see if it will restore anything that may be missing. It definitely sounds like there may be some problems with the windows install that are only showing up when you try to clone the drive.

As for posting pictures here I typically use https://imgur.com/ for hosting.

 

[USAFRet]

Tried the backup options. Same result. Made a copy of the disk management screen but have never tried to attach a picture here and need some help. Looked OK though.

Captain Z. Retired USAF Retread

Upload your pic(s) to imgur.com, post the link here.

 

[Leon Zdanowicz]

Upload your pic(s) to imgur.com, post the link here.

Probably no need. I can describe what's there And I am surprised. The drive shows 4small partitions before the C: drive. My clean win 11 drive without my apps and files shows only 2 small partitions before the C: drive. So I cloned my main drive to another ssd drive and of course got the blue screen. Went into the BIOS and again a surprise. The cloned blue screen drives each showed up 3 times on the boot screen menu. My clean win 11 only once. Now the kicker. When I clicked on the first two of each cloned drive I got the usual BS. But when i clicked on the 3rd they booted. ???????

 

[USAFRet]

Probably no need. I can describe what's there And I am surprised. The drive shows 4small partitions before the C: drive. My clean win 11 drive without my apps and files shows only 2 small partitions before the C: drive. So I cloned my main drive to another ssd drive and of course got the blue screen. Went into the BIOS and again a surprise. The cloned blue screen drives each showed up 3 times on the boot screen menu. My clean win 11 only once. Now the kicker. When I clicked on the first two of each cloned drive I got the usual BS. But when i clicked on the 3rd they booted. ???????

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

Does the system work properly now?

 

[Leon Zdanowicz]

Maybe. I'll try cloning one tomorrow.