Startup repair loop after macrium cloning

[Jsedivy]

Hi,
I have a Lenovo t520 running windows 7. A few months after I bought it, I was getting hard drive Errors from the diagnostics tool so I got a new seagate drive under warranty.

Here is what I have tried so far.
- I used the windows 7 "create system image" utility to creat an image to my new HD which I connected via an external SATA enclosure. It didn't work at first because of an "error on the source or destination disk".
- I ran chkdsk and was able to create an image.
- I swapped in the new hard drive and booted from a system recovery disk that I created with the win7 utility.
- that didn't work - I got an error something like "could not find drive". (I didn't write down the exact message)
- looking through forums, I found that others had had problems with the windows 7 utility so I tried downloading Acronis. The installation failed because of "Microsoft .NET 4 component incompatibility". The link to a trouble shooting page gave me a 404 error.
- I downloaded macrium and created a clone (after formatting the new drive with windows utility to get rid of the previous image)
- I swapped in the new HD - without a recovery CD because my understanding was that you don't need a recovery CD when you make a clone.
- now I have been in the startup repair loop for 13 hours. The error that it gives is always "system volume on disk is corrupt.
Repair action: file system repair (chkdsk)
Result: completed successfully Error code 0x0

At this point, I'm thinking that maybe my original disk was so messed up that it was a mistake to try to copy it and I should just do a clean install - which I was trying to avoid to save time but that totally backfired...

Another data point here is that my system was really getting painfully slow during this whole process. When I powered down a couple of times it installed updates which took over 1 hour! This happened twice.

Now I am concerned about stopping the startup repair loop and powering down because I read in these forums that this can cause irreparable damage to the hard drive.

I would like to get on with my life.
Any advice would be appreciated!

Jana

 

[ignatzatsonic]

At this point, I'm thinking that maybe my original disk was so messed up that it was a mistake to try to copy it and I should just do a clean install - which I was trying to avoid to save time but that totally backfired...

That would be my first guess.

Even if the original disk was OK, I'd lean toward doing a clean install.

I'd cut my losses and go with a clean install. If you still have issues, they should become apparent quickly.

 

[Maguscreed]

You may want to hop by the manufacturer's website for the new drive, grab their tools and make sure it's not having problems as well. Though I do doubt that's the case I've gotten very few doa drives in my time.

 

[Jsedivy]

Thank you. I will try those suggestions.
Can you tell me how to stop the startup repair loop without damaging my hard drive though?

Jana

 

[Maguscreed]

it's possible the bootmgr needs to be rebuilt.
That is doable.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/104341-bootmgr-missing-fix.html
start at step 4. ...or feel free to read the whole thing.

 

[hexaae]

Have you run chkdsk with parameters /f /r?
chkdsk drive: /f /r
This is the correct command to fix bad blocks and surface errors...

About Windows failing to boot... In the past I read something about this kind of errors and as far as I can remember...

- I swapped in the new hard drive and booted from a system recovery disk that I created with the Windows 7 utility.
- that didn't work - I got an error something like "could not find drive". (I didn't write down the exact message)

...this happens because Windows cloned image expects the same drive letter for the (new) mounted drive. If it was C: then the new drive must be mounted and recognized by the booting OS as C:, not D: or anything else or it will fail!