Tried to migrate to new SSD, now BOOTMGR is missing

[nathanielf2]

I've been running Windows 10 on my desktop for a few years with a 64gb SSD for the boot drive and a 2tb HDD for everything else. I bought a new SSD (Samsung Evo 850 if it matters) to put my games, then decided to clone my boot drive to it, but now I can't boot the PC at all even without the new SSD installed. I never disconnected my old drives, just hooked the new one up to the SATA and power connectors from the optical drive I never use. I used EaseUs to clone my original boot drive, and once that was complete I rebooted the PC just to make sure everything was ok and got the "BOOTMGR IS MISSING, PRESS CTRL+ALT+DEL TO RESTART" message. I disconnected the new drive and double checked the connections but no dice. I can't get into bios, as the PC goes directly to the BOOTMGR screen or briefly shows the MSI logo but won't respond to keypresses before continuing to the error screen. I did copy an ISO also created with EaseUs to a flash drive and set a system restore point before starting the process. I'm very new to upgrading my own PC and think that I might have somehow disabled the boot drive in the windows Disk Manager while trying to set up the new SSD-is that something that could happen? I do have a laptop that I could use to make a bootable USB from the iso, I think. Any insight would be appreciated!

Quick update: I managed to get into the bios, but the original SSD doesn't show up in the boot menu. I connected the new drive to that sata port but it didn't recognize that one either. I'm really stumped.

 

[kenrivers]

Was the data drive connected when you first installed Windows 10 on the 64GB SSD? If yes, then Windows 10 probably installed BOOTMGR on the data drive and when you cloned the 64GB SSD to your new SSD BOOTMGR did not transfer over with the clone. The easiest way to solve this is to disconnect the data drive and do a clean install of Windows 10 on the new SSD and then reconnect the data drive..

 

[nathanielf2]

I actually figured the issue out since asking--the SSD was showing up in the list of drives in the bios, but not the boot order, until I changed the hard drive bbs to pick the SSD. I'm replying from the fixed computer now, thanks for your response!

 

[lucian_plety]

Hello guys. I just had the same problem but with win 7 after i cloned it with easeus todo backup. Next i sad lets give it a chance with Macrium Reflect and then it works. You must keep the order of the partitions in the new ssd. Good luck. It is curious because at home it worked with Easeus but at work it did not.