No USB to Sata cable with new SSD purchase , other ways to install.

^^This sounds perfect.

You said earlier that you had recently done a new install and you didn't have that much data/programs to recreate, right? I guess it is time for that clean Windows install. The Macrium thing sounds to me to do with the size disparity between your old hard drive and your new SSD but WHS might be able to help you more with that. I think there are ways to get around that but just my opinion you are better off just starting fresh. You can then get your data off that old hard drive using a cheap enclosure like the one I linked to in my previous post.

Actually i had a brain freeze due to lack of sleep and frustration , i installed the image to my external drive (of course) and successfully made a system image of C drive with the boot drive also transferred to it .

Unfortunately it made zero difference and i got the same (cannot install ) message.

This is exactly what i was concerned about lol.

I wonder if cloning the C drive would make any difference.

I think i would like to try re installing but am confused how to go about it on a new unrecognized drive , do i still need to go through the command prompts and what about Intel's toolbox stuff ?

OK, I reinstalled and all seems to be good now , I optimized with the Intel toolbox. The below screenshot show the controllers are "ide" , should they be set to AHCI or is that the way it's supposed to look?

I also completed the quick diagnostic and full diagnostic test and both completed successfully.

Thanks , i made the changes in regedit and when i went to bios, AHCI was already enabled , i recall seeing it was enabled right after i reinstalled so a little confusing because i didn't change anything.

I did not get any of the screens like Barefootkid got after making those regedit changes though. I did restart the computer a few times to make sure .

Oh , one last question , i see in bios that my SSD is the second option and my DVD drive is the first to boot . I switched for the DVD to boot first because i reinstalled Windows , should i change it back now?

Thanks