Clone Win 7 and Win 8 drives failed

The first (and only) time I've ever tried to clone a drive.

Neither, of the two, clone programs worked.

Normally, I restore from an image.

Right Jack, that is my experience too.

Jack. I would like you to try the following. My suspicion is that the MBR is not pointing to the active partition.

Get the bootable CD of partition wizard iso and burn that to CD. Then boot the PC with that CD and inspect the cloned disk. See whether there is an active partition. If not, activate the one that has the bootmgr (Partition tab > Modify). You have to first highlight that partition.

Then highlight the disk in question, go to the Disk tab and 'Rebuild MBR". You have to APPLY (very top left) in order for it to execute. Then try again booting from that disk.

I don't know whether that will work, but it is worth a try.

I no longer have a "cloned" disc. I rebuilt my SSD's from images.

And I wanted to reproduce the problem and it did not work - see here: Cloning

Murphy's Law says it will work when you don't want it to work.