W7 Clone Not Loading in New Laptop

W7 installed on Dell XPS 13 9350. Clone made of this ssd - a Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo plus.

Clone installed on Dell XPS 13 9380..

Booting the clone results in an error while trying to read the boot configuration data. File:\EFI\microsoft\boot\BCD

Status: 0xc000000f

(I tried booting S1W2's boot repair disk but it will not load. (The 9350 laptop has one USB C port and two USB A ports. (Th9380 laptop only has USB C ports but Dell provides a USB C to USB A cable. Is the USB C port the issue here?)

Please clarify:
What drive had Win 7 on Dell XPS 13 9350? Did you clone to the Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo?
Is the Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo the main drive that came with the Dell XPS 13 9380?

The XPS 13 9380 has two M.2 2230/2280. One is for PCIe/NVMe solid-state drive and the other for SATA solid-state drive.
Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo is a PCIe/NVMe solid-state drive. Did you install it on the correct slot?

The XPS 13 9350 is a Skylake (6th Generation) that is compatible with Win 7
The XPS 13 9380 is a Whiskey Lake (8th Generation) that isn't compatible with Win 7. You can't just change a Win 10 drive with a Win 7 drive.
On the XPS 13 9380, is Safe boot and CSM enabled on BIOS?

@SIW2 can help

Thank you for replying.

Megahertz07 said:

Please clarify:
What drive had Win 7 on Dell XPS 13 9350? Did you clone to the Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo?

The 9350 had a Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo. I clone that to a new Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo

Is the Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo the main drive that came with the Dell XPS 13 9380?

No, the 9380 came with a SK Hynix 250 Gb drive. I had already clone that to a SK Hynix 1 Tb drive which worked in the 9380


The XPS 13 9380 has two M.2 2230/2280. One is for PCIe/NVMe solid-state drive and the other for SATA solid-state drive.
Samsung 2Tb 970 Evo is a PCIe/NVMe solid-state drive. Did you install it on the correct slot?

Yes I did.

The XPS 13 9350 is a Skylake (6th Generation) that is compatible with Win 7
The XPS 13 9380 is a Whiskey Lake (8th Generation) that isn't compatible with Win 7. You can't just change a Win 10 drive with a Win 7 drive.

I did not know that!

On the XPS 13 9380, is Safe boot and CSM enabled on BIOS?

I have tried with both Secure boot enabled, disabled and with Legacy Option ROMs enabled. CSM does not appear anywhere in the BIOS

@SIW2 can help

- - - Updated - - -

SIW2 said:

It is probably possible with something to get around the lack of csm support.

GitHub - manatails/uefiseven: An EFI loader that emulates int10h interrupts needed for booting Windows 7 under UEFI Class 3 systems.

S1W2,

Thank you very much indeed for the link. Off to read the details.

(My wife is partially disabled and needs to use Dragon Naturally Speaking on the laptop. She has tried various versions on her new Latitude laptop running W10 but cannot get it working to her satisfaction. The only combo which works for her is version 14 on a W7 platform. I cannot get W7 at all on the Latitude and thought it would be a simple job to install W7 on the XPS 9380 which I believe is a Class 2 laptop - the Latitude being a Class 3 laptop; how wrong I was!)

S1W2,

Thank you for the link. The file appears to be a .tibx file – I don’t know if 7zip will be able to open it (downloading it at the moment).

I did follow your link to GitHub - manatails/uefiseven: An EFI loader that emulates int10h interrupts needed for booting Windows 7 under UEFI Class 3 systems.

The first part of the instructions were straightforward:

1. Prepare Windows 7 installation USB Drive
2. Rename bootx64.efi at (UsbDrive)\EFI\Boot\ to bootx64.original.efi
3. Unpack bootx64.efi from UefiSeven archive and copy it to (UsbDrive)\EFI\Boot\
4. Finish initial installation and wait for reboot prompt

Prior to following the above instructions, the W7 installation gets as far as the first reboot and then self cancels as it cannot reboot. With the above instructions 1 to 4 the W7 installation refuses to even start so I was unable to follow 5, 6, and 7 below which look very complicated.

1. Power off computer
2. Rename bootmgfw.efi at (HDD)\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ to bootmgfw.original.efi
3. Copy UefiSeven bootx64.efi to (HDD)\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi using EFI shel

S1W2

Thank you again but how do I access the partition if I have powered off the computer? Do I reboot it and open a command prompt?

S1W2

Thank you. I recall using wimpe once before.