Cloned to SSD now in selective startup mode- Problem?


  1. howardrg
    Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
       New #1

    Cloned to SSD now in selective startup mode- Problem?


    Please bear with me for my short (perhaps amusing) tale of difficulty and discovery:


    1. I recently cloned my Windows 7 OS from an HDD to an SSD and disconnected the old HDD (though I left it in the computer case, just in case). I reordered my HDDs and startup devices in the BIOS and everything was working smoothly.


    2. Background Note #1: a couple of years ago I had a dual boot setup, but I decided to keep Win 7 and ditch Vista so I disabled the dual boot option and deleted the Vista installation. I even repartitioned the old hard drive so the space occupied by the old Vista partition was added to the Win 7 partition. The computer reliably booed straight into Win 7 without asking me to select an OS.


    3. I noticed that my newly cloned SSD-based installation of Win 7 was running under "selective startup" rather than "normal startup" (judging from msconfig information). I thought I would just set it to "normal startup" but that turned out to be a bad decision. After I restarting I was presented a dual boot option: Vista or Win 7! I thought I had seen the last of that. I selected Win 7 and then got the message, "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause." It suggested I do a repair with the Win 7 setup disk. I do have my Win 7 setup disk but couldn't get the computer to boot from the CD drive.


    4. Background Note #2: The reason the computer wouldn't boot from the CD-ROM drive was because I thought that all I had to do was set the CD-ROM as the first boot device in the BIOS and then it would AUTOMATICALLY boot from the CD-ROM. Ha!I now know that I was only part of the way there: I ALSO had to press F8 at the right point in the boot process, select the CD-ROM drive using the arrow keys, and THEN respond to a "press-any-key-to-boot-from-the-CD-ROM" message. Now I know.


    5. Not being able to boot to the setup CD, I re-connected my orininal HDD, disconnected the SSD, reordered boot devices in BIOS, and successfully booted to the old installation of Win 7.


    6. I re-cloned the HDD to the SSD (repeating step 1) and now I am back where I started.


    7. Should I worry that the computer is running in selective startup mode? Now that I know how, should I boot to the setup CD and do a repair (a possible boot-sector issue)? Or should I just leave well enough alone?
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  3. fireberd
    Posts : 8,135
    Windows 10 64 bit
       New #2

    Cloning is a hit or miss. Works for some and not for others.

    I tried cloning my hard drive to SSD and it never worked. I tried the cloning program that came with my new Samsung SSD, I tried the clone feature in Macrium Reflect and another cloning program. I was not successful on any of them. I did a "disk image" (drive backup) to the hard drive I use for backups and then "restored" to the new SSD and everything worked properly.

    Keep in mind when you clone, you copy everything, even bad and empty blocks to the new drive. When you do the disk image, as I noted, you only get the actual data, minus the bad and empty blocks.

    My suggestion is to do the disk image thing. We had a discussion about this last year with some of our software guru's and the general consensus was that it works OK sometimes and not for others.

    If you don't have a image program, the free version of Macrium Reflect will do it.
    Macrium Reflect Free
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  4. howardrg
    Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Believe it or not, I may have actually gotten the benefit of the disk image approach. I didn't provide that detail in my original post too keep it simple, but here's what I did: After the clone to the SSD, I immediately made an image of the SSD using Acronis. Then, after I blew it up by selecting "normal Startup," I did NOT re-clone as stated in the OP, but I restored the Acronis image to the SSD from within Windows (requiring a reboot). I did not use the Acronis rescue disk because at the time I hadn't figured out the steps to get the computer to boot from the CD-ROM .

    Do you think I avoided the bad/empty blocks by doing it this way?

    And should I do some kind of boot repair to get back to normal startup, or forget about it? Are there disadvantages to having it run in selective startup?

    Thanks for your help!
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  6. Ranger4
    Posts : 9,746
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit sp1
       New #4

    @ howard. Use Selective Start Up. Selective Start Up only loads the devices that are necessary to get the computer started, so it make starting up much faster.
    My computer is set for selective Start Up & has been like that for years.
    From the screen shot below you can see the only device set for start up in my Anti Virus.
    If you untick any program in this list it will reset the computer to Selective Start Up.

    Cloned to SSD now in selective startup mode- Problem?-start-up-menu.png

    I have used Macrium for cloning & for doing images & have found it to be reliable & easy to use & I have never had a problem with cloning.
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  7. howardrg
    Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    Wow! Don't you need some of those processes to get programs to work? I my setup they are ALL checked.
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  8. Ranger4
    Posts : 9,746
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit sp1
       New #6

    No you don't need any of them checked except the AV program. When you need a program it starts when you request it & not before, therefore the start up loading time is reduced & is much faster.
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  10. howardrg
    Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       New #7

    Good to know. Thanks!
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