Solved Cloned install boot issues

[chrysalis]

Ok long story short.

Used messy procedure to clone hdd to ssd via norton ghost.

The 100mbit partition is removed, and new partition is aligned on ssd.

New partition has mbr, marked as active, and is now the system partition, the system boot part WORKS. Its for sure as I removed old system files of original hdd boot.

Now here is where I am currently stuck.

On boot comes up a boot menu with 2 options, both windows 7. One is the hdd, other is supposed to be ssd but also boots the hdd.

In msconfig I see the following.

The non default one is to boot of c: drive.
the default one boots of \device\harddisk\volume3\windows

in easy bcd I renamed them so can tell both apart however in terms of boot source of files I can only change drive letter not volume.

so I am stuck.

What defines what is the c: drive right at the start of system boot? in bios the ssd is first boot device yet it seems the original hdd is assigned c:.

currently volume 3 is the old system reserved partition so it seems it points to same device hence both options booting of hdd, the ssd is volume 10. currently without a drive letter, before last reboot it did have a drive letter tho.

Also I just tried setting the device to BOOT in easybcd for the default option but its still booting of hdd.

 

[Arc]

Unplug the HDD, and run http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html for three consecutive times with only the SSD plugged in .

Set the SSD as the first boot device in BIOS.

In the Edit boot entry page of EasyBCD, check Skip boot menu.


Now it should boot directly from the SSD.

 

[chrysalis]

hdd impossible to unplug sadly its hard to access cable without causing issues.

 

[whs]

Copy the bootmgr to C on the SSD. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

 

[chrysalis]

somehow i managed to access the sata cable on board for the hdd (10+ drives trust me its hard, and be a big tsk to get back in) and unplugged.

now it booted first time to ssd, it seems as if windows bootloader is a bit dumb and searches for operating system in order of drives or something.

now with that out of way it hung on preparing desktop for a couple of minutes and then was staring at a blank desktop for 10 mins, windows unactivated as well, I then ctrl-alt-del loaded task managaer, explorer which then finished the boot, all my gui config desktop etc. icons etc. missing and a bubble saying I am on a temp profile as my files cant be accessed.

I cant load a window to browse files/dirs cant load computer management"the spcified path does not exist" I suspect the drive is labeled as f: not c:.

I already did that easybcd process you linked to. remember the system is able to boot of the ssd bootmgr, the issue is whats happenening after the boot menu.

confirmed the drive is f: and is no c: drive at all now.

 

[chrysalis]

startup repair says nothing wrong, windows still boots as f:

so to summarise.

if hdd plugged in.

ssd loads bootmgr but windows is loaded of hdd on c: with both boot optoins

if hdd unplugged

ssd loads bootmgr, first boot option fails as hdd unplugged, 2md default loads os of ssd but it boots as f: which causes massive failures on boot as profile etc. cannot be accessed.

 

[chrysalis]

more fun and games

from bit of googling its became apparent one should never boot a cloned disk the first time with the original still plugged in as I did.

So I wiped the drive using clean in diskpart. (since i cant use disk manager without plugging this other hdd back in)

now symantec recovery disk does not show the drive as available to restore to it is listed in diskpart as online.

also I cant secure erase the ssd due to samsungs tool not working on boot, so I am hoping if I ever get this done a optimisation run will sort out all trim etc. on wiped blocks.

I also see partitions listed that arent on diskpart, so SRD seems funky. I guess I need to take a pic with my camera to show you guys what I mean.

 

[chrysalis]

ok that 99gig was a theortical partition on the ssd if it cloned the partition I figured it out in end.

so restored imagae again to ssd.
copied over bootmgr as before.
this time with oiginal hdd unplugged it boots fine. although is a pause on boot. is c: drive.

however of course I still want to use old hdd is expensive wd black 640gig. so plug it back in. luckily wasnt that hard to do in end.
however it now messed up boot again.

i think but not sure it booted off hdd windows partition again by noise and it has given me a black desktop as it seems the hdd boot doesnt work properly now.

what I wanted was to keep the windows files intact on this drive but it seems this isnt going to be possible if I want the ssd to boot and work normally.

update I think is still using ssd but is a signatur collision with old hdd. Can this be fixed without wiping old hdd?

 

[Kaktussoft]

startup repair says nothing wrong, windows still boots as f:

so to summarise.

if hdd plugged in.

ssd loads bootmgr but windows is loaded of hdd on c: with both boot optoins

if hdd unplugged

ssd loads bootmgr, first boot option fails as hdd unplugged, 2md default loads os of ssd but it boots as f: which causes massive failures on boot as profile etc. cannot be accessed.

you can't simply clone. But it easy fixable!

in bootmenu:
working entry points to HDD win7
non working entry points to SSD win7. But in this SSD win7 version is registry setting that is pointing to HDD win7!!

Steps to do:
First do in http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html when booted from SSD to HDD win7:
bcdedit /enum all

what see you after all lines starting with device, osdevice, filedevice?
All are like "device partition=Q:" ? Of course it's not Q in your case but does it look that way?

 

[Kaktussoft]

startup repair says nothing wrong, windows still boots as f:

so to summarise.

if hdd plugged in.

ssd loads bootmgr but windows is loaded of hdd on c: with both boot optoins

if hdd unplugged

ssd loads bootmgr, first boot option fails as hdd unplugged, 2md default loads os of ssd but it boots as f: which causes massive failures on boot as profile etc. cannot be accessed.

you can't simply clone. But it easy fixable!

in bootmenu:
working entry points to HDD win7
non working entry points to SSD win7. But in this SSD win7 version is registry setting that is pointing to HDD win7!!

Steps to do:
First do in http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html when booted from SSD to HDD win7:
bcdedit /enum all

what see you after all lines starting with device, osdevice, filedevice?
All are like "device partition=Q:" ? Of course it's not Q in your case but does it look that way?

Just listen to my steps.... I gonna get it fixed!

 

[Kaktussoft]

If you boot to win7 HDD ... what is drive letter of SSD partition with WIN7? I assume no drive letter at all(?) How I know... because you said "the default one boots of \device\harddisk\volume3\windows". Assign it a drive letter Q.

then in elevated command prompt:

reg  query  hklm\system\mounteddevices  /f  dosdevices\Q:

post output please (do it copy/paste I need exact output)

 

[whs]

You are not going to get out of this mess unless you do this the right way. There are obviously many different ways and I have tried most of them. The simplest I found is this:

1. On your HDD, copy the bootmgr to the C partition. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

2. Define an aligned active primary partition on the SSD. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary align=1024
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active
Exit

3. Image the C partition from the HDD

4. Restore this image to the SSD

5. Change the BIOS boot order to boot from the SSD

No need to unplug any disks.

Here is one of my tutorials for further reference: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html

 

[Kaktussoft]

You are not going to get out of this mess unless you do this the right way. There are obviously many different ways and I have tried most of them. The simplest I found is this:

1. On your HDD, copy the bootmgr to the C partition. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

2. Define an aligned active primary partition on the SSD. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary align=1024
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active
Exit

3. Image the C partition from the HDD

4. Restore this image to the SSD

5. Change the BIOS boot order to boot from the SSD

No need to unplug any disks.

Not needed at all now!! Easy to fix. I'll explain later if have answer to my latest post

 

[whs]

Yeah, you tell me. It can obviously be fixed, but that is going to be more messy. Why not do it right from the beginning.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Yeah, you tell me. It can obviously be fixed, but that is going to be more messy. Why not do it right from the beginning.

Most image restore programs do the same trick I gonna explain later.

Clone ... is just a clone. Old C remains C. That's the only thing to be fixed!
Also the BCD need to be fixed, but he already did because win7 SSD is in boot menu. Wait till OP posts back and I tell you how

Of course doing it the right way is the best

 

[chrysalis]

thanks guys for your time, sorry I didnt check back earlier.

The new routine I am curious if would have solved the need to remove old hdd as that would have been great but now I am up and running on the ssd.

I didnt do a sector clone, where disk sectors are copied over, I did a image backup and then restore again onto new media, I did the restore offline deliberatly using SRD rather than inside windows.

Now it seems my marvell controller caused some issues, the weird issue I reported in my post was marvell controller related which went away when the ssd was put on the intel so even tho the ssd seemed fine on the marvell when not using the OS it seems the OS was enough to bring the controller down. So now its on my intel sata2.

Now the conflict with the original hdd I came across this page.

Fixing Disk Signature Collisions - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

So simply remounting my old hdd forced it a new identifier which I assume removes any future conflicts.

So now I am on the ssd, 100meg partition removed (to make future images simpler), its the active system partition so not reliant on any hdd partition to boot. The only thing I want to make sure is ok now is it can boot into recovery without media as before I was using a win7 install usb stick.

So sadly guys I wont be trying what you said so sorry if your time wasted but appreciate you came here to help and I hope your valuable posts help others in this situation or maybe myself in future.

The routine I followed roughly was.

Norton ghost image backup in windows. Default settings to diff physical hdd.
Made a symantec recovery disc.
Booted the disc (and cleaned ssd partition if not unpartitioned).
Started recover my pc wizard.
On the screen where it lists partitions to recover and where to I deleted the system reserved partition and then selected edit button.
On the next screen I selected my ssd and reduced the partition to extend my provisioning as samsung reccomended (extra 10%).
I also unticked restore drive signature and made sure other 3 ticked which was mbr, active partition and check for errors after recovery.
unplugged original hdd if plugged in.
when it was finished I rebooted into win7 installl media.
This offers to fix bcd menu at first run, I found selecting yes or no here makes no diff as it works either way, if select no it wont offer again. If select yes it needs another reboot so make sure boot back into it again.
After install media loads, and chose locale then go into repair mode and load the command prompt.
I then ran bcdboot to install the bootmgr onto the ssd (as lost with system recovery partition deletion).
After this can reboot and ssd should boot.
After first boot reboot again with original hdd plugged in.

So that was a working procedure for me, this does also have the ssd aligned.

After the marvell stuff I did restore again as many files were corrupt. Ironically the ssd now benchmarks higher 50% full than when was empty. System is lightning fast.

Also windows stayed activated this time and the ssd gets 7.8 on WEI, my weakness on that now is my cpu at 7.3.

I had to use win7 install media because the bcdboot on the SRD was no good as symantec only have 32bit media and my OS is 64bit.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Assume your SSD WIN7 partition was called Q when booted in HHD WIN7. All in elevated command prompt

reg  query  hklm\system\mounteddevices  /f dosdevices\Q:

output:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\mounteddevices
\DosDevices\Q: REG_BINARY 56E29668000060461C000000
remember the number you find. You have to enter it later
The real hklm\system hive of SDD win7 is actually file Q:\windows\system32\config\system. We load it in current registry in key hklm\ssdwin7.

reg  load  hklm\ssdwin7  Q:\windows\system32\config\system

Now we can add the right value. Actually a replace

reg  add  hklm\ssdwin7\mounteddevices  /v  \DosDevices\C: /t  REG_BINARY  /d [COLOR=red][B]56E29668000060461C000000[/B][/COLOR]

replace the red text with the number you got previously
say yes if it asks you to override!
check if it's done right

reg  query  hklm\ssdwin7\mounteddevices  /f  \DosDevices\C:

You see same numbers now?
unload the registry hive

reg  unload  hklm\ssdwin7

That was the solution. But you fixed it yourself .. great

 

[Kaktussoft]

The only thing I want to make sure is ok now is it can boot into recovery without media as before I was using a Windows 7 install usb stick.

Is that working?

 

[chrysalis]

not checked yet, but great solution you posted for the letter issue.

What I have just noticed is all my hidden updates unhidden and windows says never previously installed updates . This may be related to me uninstalling my sp1 update backups tho in preperation for the ssd migration? as now I think about i guess that removed all update backups. I had to reaccept eula for the Malicous software removal tool also.

 

[Kaktussoft]

not checked yet, but great solution you posted for the letter issue.

What I have just noticed is all my hidden updates unhidden and windows says never previously installed updates . This may be related to me uninstalling my sp1 update backups tho in preperation for the ssd migration? as now I think about i guess that removed all update backups. I had to reaccept eula for the Malicous software removal tool also.

Why did you uninstall SP1?

A potential bigger problem is the following:

• you booted SSD-win7. But actually it was SSD-win7 registry and HDD-win7 OS partition.
• you booted HDD-win7. But actually it was HDD-win7 registry and HDD-win7 OS partition. This is correct

So when booted to SSD-win7 it updated HDD-win7 OS partition but not the right registry!

Did you install/uninstall any software when booted in SSD-win7? Any windows updates?

If so ... install the software again on the now good configured SSD. Uninstall the latest patches and let "windows updates" check for updates.