Cloned drive booting but not finishing loading.

[Califauna]

Hi,

I have cloned an SSD in a desktop to another SSD which is now in a laptop but the new SSD gets stuck at the spinning blue windows icon on a black screen (windows boot logo is not on screen however).

Initially I couldn't get it to boot but after editind the boot partition I have not set the correct partition to boot. I read it might be caused by Nvidia drivers (imagine that

) so I have set it to boot into safe mode by again editing the EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD directory, setting the boot policy to legacy so I get the safe mode option old school windows style.

However, it now gets stuck at the spinning disk (1 hour and no change).

Likely something to do with drivers? Is there some way to delete/force a re-installation of motherboard and system drivers upon boot?

The source drive in the desktop is 250 GB SSD off a ASUS rampage 3 Extreme with a bunch of drives and devices attached to it (keyboard, musical keyboard, mouse, etc). The OS was installed on a legacy type BIOS, with drives in SATA mode (not IDE)

Laptop with cloned drive is a Lenovo Flex 3 1580 with. Default in BIOS is UEFI but have changed to legacy and disabled secure boot, Intel Virtualization Technology and Intel Platform Trust Technology. Also have tried with secure boot enabled.

OS is Windows 10 Pro.

Is there an error log or event log that might be informative, which I could post here?

Thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In your case, I would (spend the extra) for cloning software, that had a "dissimilar restore" feature, that was DESIGNED to restore to dis-similar hardware configurations. Those cloning software(s) (nearly always only in paid options) have features to change up the registry and drivers when making the clone, to assist the cloned image in booting on dissimilar hardware. Good luck! Sounds you you have a challenge ahead of you.

PS. Is there really no option, of backing up the data from the old system, and then installing a new SSD into the laptop, and doing a fresh install of Windows 10 64-bit, and then, if necessary, restore the data files back onto the laptop?

 

[Califauna]

Yes it really needs to be a clone of the installed OS for various reasons unfortunately.

Any recommendations of software which definitely has the feature you mention?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that the paid versions of Acronis TrueImage (might be a higher-tier of paid version, specifically for that feature), and I think that the paid business version of Macrium Reflect also can do so.

 

[deustroop]

I don't think anything will work but a fresh install.I'm not sure that a clone would ever boot a completely different hardware and software installation. Such a thing would bee a boon to upgraders everywhere but just will not work for obvious reasons.

 

[xgsound]

I know little or nothing about win 10. Perhaps we can modify my win7 procedures. Get the source machine into safe mode.
If possible, put the working win 10 in safe mode with networking and THEN clone it. It may then power up the other machine in safe mode and allow you to find/ install drivers for the new machine.

I do not know how or if this affects activation.

 

[Califauna]

I don't think anything will work but a fresh install.I'm not sure that a clone would ever boot a completely different hardware and software installation. Such a thing would bee a boon to upgraders everywhere but just will not work for obvious reasons.

I have performed the same operation with windows 10 many times before. It usually just says' preparing your computer' and starts installing the new hardware drivers.

 

[Califauna]

I know little or nothing about win 10. Perhaps we can modify my win7 procedures. Get the source machine into safe mode.
If possible, put the working win 10 in safe mode with networking and THEN clone it. It may then power up the other machine in safe mode and allow you to find/ install drivers for the new machine.

I do not know how or if this affects activation.

Migration is necessary due to the number of installations and their configurations (Hyper-V, whose virtual machine exports aren't working for me, and other programs and environments which took ages to install or configure). At any rate I'd like to know why in this particular case it hasn't worked, which will take some digging around for sure.

Regarding the licensing, when I have done this on other occasions I have just changed the license used (I have two licenses anyway), so no biggie. I also change the PC name so they are differentiable on the network.

The safe mode suggestion is a good idea. Will give it a go.

 

[Califauna]

I don't think anything will work but a fresh install.I'm not sure that a clone would ever boot a completely different hardware and software installation. Such a thing would bee a boon to upgraders everywhere but just will not work for obvious reasons.

I´m writing this very thread from the same laptop using an installation cloned from the same desktop. Disk cloning works ....sometimes (in my experience, always, bar this particular migration).

 

[Califauna]

ANyone prepared to help me dig around and find out why it's not working in this case?

I've checked the srt log. It returns passes for all tests it carries out and thus I recieve the notification that it couldn't fix the problem''.

ANy other logs I can check (I have access to the disk, though obviously not online)?

 

[Califauna]

Following up on this, for anyone with similar issues when using a cloned/migrated installation, the windows boot log fie can be enabled and used to identify driver issues at boot.

When using a cloned drive also change system hardware ID and computer name to avoid having PC with the same names/identifiers on your network.

More info:

https://www.sysnative.com/forums/th...-but-doesnt-finish-loading.28968/#post-266504

 

[deustroop]

The issue, of conflicting part IDs, arises from a poorly coded cloning app not the part IDs themselves. Here I clone drives back and forth in the same system frequently. Never such an issue except for the time I used Samsung's cloning app.This was not able to create a full disk clone with a different disk ID number, causing a failure to be able to run both origin and target at the same time in the system.The clone app was designed, I figured, for the original disk to be removed and replaced by the clone. I immediately moved to Macrium which was not hobbled by this constraint. Using the better coded item creates clones which run in the same system. No adjustments for limited capabilities.​

 

[Califauna]

deustroop I think you must be referring to the HDD signatures or something. The quality or coding of the cloning app has nothing to do with adjustments of the system identifers I'm talking about. And in my case I use the cloned installation in other hardware not the same system.

The system identifiers which are changed by the program I mention in the thread at the forum indicated are the following (taken from the website of the program):

-WSUS ID for Windows Updates,
-the MachineGuid,
-the Device Identifier for modern Windows apps,
-the MSDTC CID,
-the Dhcpv6 DUID,
-the SQL Server Master database,
-the encryption state to preserve encrypted files, Windows Action Center settings, Certificates, etc.

These are not exposed to partition cloning apps, and they couldn't read them anyway because the system needs to be online to change them (and I understand that they are all encrypted anyway).

I like macrium and used to use it but recently it started giving errorsl (problems with Volume Shadow Service). Not sure if it was something to do with it being a portable version of the app, but anyway I switched to using R-Drive Image and thats what I use for all stuff cloning and imaging now. Awesome program.

 

[deustroop]

Yes I'm advising on disk IDs.