Numerous boot problems after cloning boot drive

[thinkpol]

Yesterday, I went to clone my SSD boot drive with Macrium Reflect to upgrade to a drive with larger capacity.

Desktop pc with Windows 7 Home Pro 64-bit on ASUS mobo, AMD Phenom II, 16 gb ram.

I cloned the drive, creating one large partition on the new drive, and ordered Macrium to letter it C: because I had had problems booting to previous attempts with auto drive lettering. Previous attempts simply wouldn't boot to the new drive (computer was looking for C:, the clone was lettered something else), I would reattach my old drive and reattempt the clone procedure. This time, however, something must have gone wrong after the clone took place, because when I try to boot the machine back up, with either drive, I stall out on one or another error code.

At the moment, the computer boots to the screen where it asks me how I want to start windows. If I attempt to start normally, it brings up the windows logo, but gives me the autochk program not found - skipping autocheck error message, followed by a flash of a blue screen, and then the computer restarts.

I was receiving bootmgr is missing errors (corrected...), as well as some others (again, seemingly corrected), but I worked on this problem for close to 10 hours yesterday and the exact timeline of errors and fixes is fuzzy at this point.

Using my roommate's install disk (Win 7 Ultimate - 32-bit):

I have used diskpart to correctly letter the volume

I have disconnected my storage drive to eliminate any complication

I have run:

bootsect

all bootrec commands numerous times

rebuilt the bcd files manually

* bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {default} device partition=c:
* bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {default} osdevice partition=c:
* bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:
* bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {memdiag} device partition=c:

I can't run sfc because the install disc I am working with at the moment has a different platform architecture than my system (32- v 64-bit)

My install cd has been overnighted to me, and I would like to try a couple things with it (running the repair program, running sfc) before I go for a complete reinstall. I call the SSD my boot drive but it does contain a suite of applications that would be a PITA to reinstall. Anyway, you never know what unexpected consequences will come from a reinstall... Plus the hours of Windows updates...

To recap, the current error message is autochk program not found - skipping autocheck, and an endless loop of "how do you want to start Windows?" Windows logo, error message, restart.

I feel like I have made some progress, because I have gone thru and eliminated a number of error messages. If there was a drive lettering clash on my system, what would that result in? What would need to be fixed? This appears to be what went wrong and I can't imagine it would cause such trouble. Another thing maybe worth noting is that when I went to shut down after the last clone procedure where I named the new drive C:, Windows did some automatic updating. Could this have anything to do with it?

Thanks in advance for reading all of this. It has been a minor nightmare, and I've sunk a lot of time into it already. I hope this gets resolved and potentially saves someone else the trouble!!

I think I could have saved myself this trouble if I have cloned the drive, shut down. Disconnect old drive, connect new in the same place, boot to install CD, run command prompt, run DISKPART, reletter the volume to C:, exit DISKPART. Oh, the things you learn only after something goes wrong...

Cory

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Is the original drive (from which you cloned) bootable now?

If it's bootable, my first thought would be to try Macrium's imaging function, rather than cloning.