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SSD Clone/MiniTool Partition problem and now OS won't boot up
Hello Rockstars,
I tried to undertake a straightforward cloning operation and have accidentally dug myself into a hole which I don't know how to get out of.
I have an old Kingston 64GB SSD drive which has my OS and programs. I tried to clone it to a new OCZ Vertex3 120GB SSD drive. After reading many forum posts here and elsewhere, the process seemed pretty simple. I used Macrium Reflect Free Home Edition, and the cloning process went fine.
I then used MiniTool Partition Wizard (Free) to expand the partition on the clone drive to make use of the full capacity of the new larger SSD. I also renamed the old Kingston drive to "MainOld". So far, so good.
Now here's where I think I got into trouble. I wanted to change the drive letter on larger SSD to C: Main and set it as my primary drive. Because I still had the old SSD still hooked up, the program wouldn't let me make these changes. I didn't want to unplug the old SSD in case something went wrong. So I changed the drive letter on the old SSD to G:"MainOld". I still couldn't make the changes to the new SSD.
So I rebooted my system and went into the BIOS. I set the new SSD as my first drive and put it 2nd on the Boot Menu list (behind the DVD drive). Windows started up fine. And since I had started up Windows using the new SSD, my desktop icons wouldn't work. I fired up the MiniTools program again from the Start Menu. Things looked promising. The new SSD was listed as a Primary drive and the old one was a Logical drive. Unfortunately, I still couldn't change the drive letter on the new SSD. A message had also popped up informing me I needed to restart Windows. So I did.
That's when the problems began. Windows seemed to start up normally. After the login screen, I got a splash screen telling me "Preparing Your Desktop". After waiting a couple of minutes, I got the BSOD with a tiny note in the bottom corner telling me my version of Windows wasn't valid. No error number or anything. I restarted Windows, went into the BIOS, and set my old SSD as my primary boot drive. This didn't help as all I got was a black screen asking for a boot CD. I reset again, went into the BIOS and set the new SSD as my primary and started windows in the Safe Mode. Another BSOD. Except by some chance, I was able to access my Task Manager. Couldn't do anything with it. So I powered off my PC, and unplugged the old SSD. That didn't work either. Same BSOD.
Also at some point in all this madness, I went into BIOS and changed Storage Config to read AHCI. Seeing how this didn't help things at all, I changed it back to IDE. Then I noticed that the BIOS wasn't seeing one of my other internal HDs.
Where did I go wrong? And how do I fix this mess?
Thank you in advance.
BigMez
FYI - Fearing something might go wrong, I did make an image of my old SSD onto another drive using Macrium Reflect. Unfortunately I couldn't create any boot media because of a corrupt or missing neutral.cab file.