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Help getting a cloned Win 7 disk to work in dual boot PC needed please
I have a problem. I have a dual-boot XP and Windows 7 PC. Each OS occupies its own HD. Last week Windows 7 wouldn’t boot until windows (eventually) succeeded in fixing some disk errors (I’m guessing bad sectors). As all the hard drives (there are 3) in this PC are made by Seagate I used Seatools to examine them. The HD that has win 7 on it failed the built-in short diagnostic self test. I therefore bought a replacement HD (taking the opportunity to get a slightly larger drive). I have cloned the old HD to the new on four separate occasions using three different tools. Each time with the same result – a boot loader error (the error number has a load of zeros followed by the letter ‘e’). Just to be on the safe side I have done a full backup of the data on both disks to partition on a new 2 terabyte HD.
A couple of background notes. Originally the Windows 7 PC had Vista on it but I upgraded it to Win 7 Home Premium a couple of Months ago. This was a boxed on DVD full version (not the upgrade version) that I bought as soon as it came out because MS were doing a cheap deal on it. Strangely it would not boot properly at switch on. I had to run it under Vista to install it. I mention this because there is supposed to be a way to fix my problem manually (even tells you the steps to take in the error message).
Unfortunately because I can’t boot from my DVD at load time I can’t use this method.
I am testing by simply unplugging the old drive and (using the same leads) plugging in the new, Then turning the power back on and trying to boot. Xp boots fine, but I get the error mentioned above for Win 7.
This is the hardware I am dealing with.
Disk 0 – Windows XP – 320 gig Sata
Disk 2 – Windows 7 – 320 gig Sata
New Disk 500 gig cloned using Seagate Disk Wizard and a usb Sata adapter.
The tools I have available are – Seatools, Seagate Disk Wizard, AOMEI Backupper Standard Edition 2.0, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 5.5 and EasyBCD 2.2 (just updated today). All are installed both under Win 7 and XP.
Now I am pretty sure that EasyBCD 2.2 could be used to fix this. My problem is that there is just so much information on their site that I can’t find the information I need in order to do so. Instead I end up a gibbering wreck in the corner. Please could someone help by giving me step by step instructions?
Thanks in advance for any help.
TR