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

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!

ThrashZone said:

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Sounds like you upgraded the install to win-10 and are trying to use the same upgraded install
That is not exactly legal and is in violation of the free upgrade agreement :)

A more reliable method would of been to use a system image and restore the image to the new ssd.
Still not legal to use both though.

I actually have two copies of Windows 7, I had to get that once finding out that the original Win7 key is forfeit after upgrade. So when I reinstalled Windows 7 on the Source drive, it was the new Win7 key that had never been used. Then that one was upgraded, so the very first Win7 key I had was meant to be used on the cloned drive. Does that make sense?

Anyway, licensing aside, I'm just looking to find out how to correct this bad signature on the winload.exe file, and would love some ideas, or confirmation if one of my ideas would work.

Clonezilla. I think the transfer was good, but I made a poor decision choosing to copy the /boot/ directory as well. It's just a matter of how to get a valid winload.exe at this point.

I agree, an upgrade to Win10 in the long run is my goal, but I had a few programs that I needed access to this upcoming week and I have vast amounts of configuration that I would like to have.

I was trying to ween myself off Win7, and this route I am kind of ripping off a bandaid.

I feel like it can be possible to fix this winload.exe file, just not familiar enough with it... hoping someone here was.

ThrashZone said:

Another way would be to use win-10 system restore back to win-7
If that is successful you'd have at least a bootable win-7.

That's one thing I've been thinking of.... say I have a bootable Win7, could I copy all my directories besides /boot/ and have all my settings and programs back and working?