Windows 7 Enterprise Boots to Blank Blue Screen after Hard Drive Clone

[RichTBiscuit10]

Hello,

I have a Shuttle SB61G2 and I wanted to upgrade the hard drive to one of a higher capacity. I wasn't prepared to reinstall Windows so I decided to clone the hard drive. I used DriveClone XML and backed up the current drive image and restored it onto the new drive. All was successful so far.

OS-Windows 7 Enterprise
Current drive-Maxtor 300GB BANC1B10
New drive-Seagate 500GB ST3500320AS

I then plugged the new drive with the restored image on into the Shuttle and turned it on. I was met with the following error message:

"Windows failed to start. A Recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your langugae settings, and then click next
3. Click "repair your computer."

Status: 0xc000000e
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."

Naturally I inserted the repair disk and it reported saying there were errors and it would automatically repair them. When it restarted it booted up normally until it reached 'preparing your desktop', it stayed on this screen for a good 3mins before producing a blank blue screen with a mouse and text in the bottom right corner of the screen saying:

"Windows 7
Build 7601
This copy of Windows is not genuine"

I was confused by this so I inserted the original hard drive and it worked fine, and its activated.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Rich

 

[kons21]

Something similar had happened to me a while back with Win XP. Windows recognizes the new hard drive as a new computer. Since your copy of windows is already registered to your old PC configuration when it checks for authenticity it appears that this is a new PC using your activation code. Call Windows support and have your activation number ready. They fixed it for me with instructions over the phone. I hope this is the issue and that this would help. Good luck!

 

[Corazon]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think if you clone the MBR signature of your old drive to the new one, that should solve the issue?
(However...if startup repair fixed your cloned Windows system by adjusting Windows to the new drive's signature, then changing the signature itself back would require you to run the startup repair again so Windows goes back on it as well...if I'm thinking this through correctly...)

 

[kons21]

I think you might be right. When it happened to me, it was my first time personally changing hardware on my PC so I did not even think about that.

 

[SIW2]

Just in case you hadn't noticed, the OP is months old.

Nevertheless:

Use Paragon rescue kit free to change the os drive letter back to it's original value.

 

[Atomic2]

Just wanted to pop in and say that this was my exact problem, and using Paragon to change the drive letter to my intended letter [the original letter path of the drive I cloned] really saved my ass.

I spent nearly an hour fumbling with the registry before seeing this.

Thanks