Cloned OS --> Winload.exe digital signature cannot be verified

neowinsizeable · 21 Apr 2016

Hi There,

I cloned my smaller SSD to my larger SSD I just purchased so I can relieve my space issue. The problem is that during the clone, I replaced my /boot/ and attempting to boot from the new drive gives me Winload.exe has a digital signature that cannot be verified

I have tried all typical startup repairs, fixing MBR, editing the BCD directly and adding a Windows 7 record on this drive, no luck.

The original drive has since been replaced with Win10 and I cannot re-clone.

I am thinking that the primary issue is that by copying the /boot/ section of my original drive, I replaced winload.exe and the fingerprint/'digital signature' does not match the new SSD, but the old.

Therefore, is there a way to generate a new winload.exe using the signature from this bigger drive?

Other than that, I'm thinking of installing Win7 again on the second half of my new SSD and taking the Winload.exe that is created there and copying that back to my cloned partition, would that work?

Really dying to get back into Win7, and doing a fresh install is not an option for me as I really need the Windows configuration and installed programs to work.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

ICIT2LOL · 25 Apr 2016

Mate first mistake as you have now found out was not to try the clone before you changed the original drive. Now I am assuming that what you have now is a non bootable drive? If so what exactly do you need from this drive if it is just data then there are ways of retrieving that and there is this you might have a look at to see if any of the option s might be of help.
Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot The only option that I can see is to retrieve the data and clean install and re install the programs you use. You didn't by any chance do a system image of the drive before you cloned it??