What could be blocking my cloned drive to boot?

I just finished cloning my disk to a new SATA drive of the exact same model using xxclone. I used the copy volume Id and created boot record info using the options in xxclone. However, now that I have the drive installed on the laptop, it won't boot stating that "no operating system installed." I've gotten to a DOS prompt in Windows Recovery and I'm able to see all of my files in C:\Windows. What am I missing to get it to boot properly?

Wandercoder

Posted 2011-09-28T13:35:26.573

Reputation: 13

I'm not familiar with xxclone, but if it's a bit for bit copy the only thing I'd say offhand is to make sure that partition you're trying to boot from is set to active. I've had success with other similar programs and haven't had to edit the boot store or anything like that. – Shinrai – 2011-09-28T14:11:11.173

Answers

The problem may be related with your BCD registry.

You will need to boot another Windows on your system(using WINPE for example) and type the following command(to adjust your bcd entries to boot Windows from C:\Windows):

bcdboot C:\Windows

I never tested xxclone, but you could also use Clonezilla to clone your disk, every time I use Clonezilla the recovered disk booted normally.

Diogo

Posted 2011-09-28T13:35:26.573

Reputation: 28 202

That helped a bit, now it says: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible. – Wandercoder – 2011-09-28T15:53:17.547

Finally created a system repair disc with the old hard drive and booted with it. It fixed the new drive in a flash by itself. Up and running. Thanks for the help. – Wandercoder – 2011-09-28T17:24:27.330

The message "no operating system installed" is usually shown by the BIOS if there is no Master Boot Record (MBR) installed. The MBR is located before the first partition of your HDD. May be you cloned only the partition and not the full drive?

After reinstalling the MBR via bootsect /nt60 ALL everything should be fine again.

Robert

Posted 2011-09-28T13:35:26.573

Reputation: 4 857

Making a system recovery disk from my master computer, the one I cloned from, using that disk on the machine I cloned to, solved the problem. It found whatever the issue was, fixed it, and I was able to get it started no problem.

Jason N

Posted 2011-09-28T13:35:26.573

Reputation: 1