Black screen with the letter "J" after cloning a drive

KK404 · 08 Apr 2018

So the screen of my laptop died and to rescue all the files and stuff on it (wich by the way i dont have any backup for it) i cloned it to another drive using MiniTool Partition wizard and tried to boot the computer from there but after restart it only showed a "j" and nothing else.

Rigth now i've watched treads about this problem and it seems that theres no OS detected or something like that and the solution is to do a clean install of windows but that kills the whole point.

Does anybody encountered this problem?
If so, how to fix it? or otherwise how to make a functional cloned disk?

Snick · 08 Apr 2018

Hi KK404,
A few questions:
What kind of disk are you trying to clone, and to what kind of disk, HDD, SSD?
What sizes, same, larger to smaller, smaller to larger?

Ranger4 · 08 Apr 2018

Hi KK404, welcome to the Forum.

How did you clone the the main Windows Operating System drive. Did you use an external USB hard drive for that?. If so you can't run windows from an external USB drive, the drive has to be directly attached to the motherboard. Most laptops only have room for one hard drive. to clone the main drive with a laptop you need an external USB drive caddy, preferably self powered, to which you attach the new drive to, then perform the clone. When that has completed, remove the old hard drive & install the clone. If the clone was successful the computer should boot & run normally.

If you are going to replace the hard drive, definitely use an SSD, they are very fast & use less power.

RolandJS · 08 Apr 2018

"...i cloned it to another drive using MiniTool Partition wizard..." I'm thinking the problem residing on the original (source) hard-drive was cloned, copied exactly without any improvements to the OS, onto the new (target) hard-drive. If the problem is hard-ware rather than software -- others will have to enter in and offer solutions.

samuria · 09 Apr 2018

If the old disk had bad sectors a clone would copy them as well and also you don't know what was corrupted on the drive. You could boot a system DVD and run chkdsk on the old disk to see what's wrong. If you try and clone a faulty drive there are special parameters in reflect so it doesn't copy bad blocks if you don't use that you end up with bad blocks on the new drive

KK404 · 09 Apr 2018

Snick said:

Hi KK404,
A few questions:
What kind of disk are you trying to clone, and to what kind of disk, HDD, SSD?
What sizes, same, larger to smaller, smaller to larger?

I've just checked the replies and i think i know what is the problem, im cloning a HDD to a larger external HDD via usb conection and acording to one of the replies it seems it has to be connected to the motherboard in order to boot up correctly but i tried to take out the HDD (of the laptop) and put it in another computer pluged directly to the motherboard to boot from there but it just looped between windows loading screen and windows system recovery window, so there's a way to use the external HDD to boot? because i dont have any drive bay and i need to clone the system to my main computer (and if somebody asks, yes it only has one sata port)

KK404 · 09 Apr 2018

RolandJS said:

I'm thinking the problem residing on the original (source) hard-drive was cloned, copied exactly without any improvements to the OS, onto the new (target) hard-drive...

Both HDD are working fine, so it's not hardware related but what do you mean by improvements?

Snick · 09 Apr 2018

Win to USB creates a bootable External Drive, however, it has to be a fresh/new install not clone.
Have you tried setting Boot from USB via boot options menu? Should work as I do this with one of my drives (Win10/Linux).
How to Boot From a USB Device
If you use boot options menu, you will have to select the ext drive every time you wish to boot from it. If you change the BIOS boot order, it will always check for the USB ext drive to boot from.

KK404 · 09 Apr 2018

Snick said:

Have you tried setting Boot from USB via boot options menu? Should work as I do this with one of my drives (Win10/Linux).
How to Boot From a USB Device
If you use boot options menu, you will have to select the ext drive every time you wish to boot from it. If you change the BIOS boot order, it will always check for the USB ext drive to boot from.

I tried that (cloning the drive, then from the bios boot up from the usb HDD) and same result from the laptop just a black screen with a "J" however from my main PC (linux based) where my bios boot order is always boot from the USB device if available it didnt load the os at all it just ignored the drive, because it always request to disconnect all drives if no OS is found. I migth try another time because i just did it once. Meanwhile, any guess about the loop made when i changed the HDD of my main pc for the laptop drive?

RolandJS · 09 Apr 2018

KK404 said:

Both HDD are working fine, so it's not hardware related but what do you mean by: "without any improvements"?

I had to add to The Quote. My answer: that was my shorthand for saying: when a clone from source hard-drive to target hard-drive includes the Operating System, in this case, Windows, whatever the condition and configuration the OS is in on the source hard-drive, that is the condition and configuration the OS will be in on the target hard-drive. Neither cloning or full imaging will improve a "busted" or "ruined" or "somewhat non-working" Operating System.