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I cloned Windows 10 from a HDD Partiton into an SSD Partition. The SSD has 2 Partitions: one (1st) is Windows 7 (manually installed) and the other is the cloned Windows 10 from previous HDD. I created the entry in Boot Menu, transfered the Boot Menu to SSD onto Win 7 Partition. Computer boots, a Win7 styled menu appears (black menu with multiple OS choices). I can select any but Windows 10 does not procede to the User Login even if it loads, just a black screen appears and a responsive cursor with loading style. The computer experiences high CPU load. I have created a Windows 10 bootable stick. But this one does not have a Repair Menu just to install a new copy.

Edit: Converted the old style Bootmenu to the Windows 10 bootmenu which gives an option to troubleshoot Windows 10.

osiris89
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3 Answers3

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I found the workaround myself. There were the drive letters that caused the trouble. Booted the cloned Window from SSD via Troubleshooting and F6 as Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Typed CTRL + SHIFT + ESC and then observed something strange. The instance actually booted the Windows from the HDD that is in the Caddy and everything was mounted as C:. But not so did the Command Prompt where it initiated D:\windows\system32 instead of C:\windows\system32. In other words the CMD instance thought it is the cloned Windows in SSD which is active. I then entered regedit from CMD, removed all the entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDevices but left the empty (Default) Value. Removed the HDD with the Caddy which is hotswappable, rebooted the system. Selected the cloned Windows 10 from SSD and to my amazement it kicked in. The MountedDevices automatically had created a new entry with current Drive (SSD) and current active Partition being correctly C:

Caution: Messing with Registry may damage your Windows!

Image of the new entry, Initial Path and Drive Uniqueidentifier

osiris89
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+1 to the answer by osiris. To add, the registry of the cloned pc has to be edited. Since Windows is not loading, we can either use safe mode as given in his answer or if the original hdd is still connected and booting, we may edit the remote registry (SDD registry) using the method in this link. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/system-management-components/remotely-edit-the-registry

Yaman Jain
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Had the same problem and was very glad to find this thread. Because there are a lot of discussions on the same problem, but none addresses the cause of the problem. Instead commercial (and from my point of view dubious) tools are suggested to solve the problem. Tested some but none worked in the free version.

I tried the solutions recommended here, but it didn't work for me. I was not able to change the registry of the cloned installation. Maybe because of my lack of knowledge in Windows (I am using linux normally).

But what worked and in the end was very easy is the linux tool reged (debian package chntpw). If the cloned partition is mounted on /mnt/Windows I used the following command to change it:

reged -e /mnt/Windows/Windows/System32/config/SYSTEM
ls
cd MountedDevices
delallv
q

That will delete the problematic values.

After that I rewrote the startup code to the EFI partition. But you most likely have done this already, otherwise you would not have faced the "black screen with cursor on startup" problem before.

T o write the startup code to the EFI partition I booted an installation usb-stick, selected the language, clicked on "computer repair options" and then "command prompt":

diskpart
list disk
select disk X  # the one that holds your new windows partition
list partition
select partition Y  # the new windows partition
assign letter=c:
select partition Z  # the efi partition
assign letter=b:
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /l de-de /s b: /f UEFI # de-de is for german, choose us for english

After that I changed the boot disk in the BIOS/UEFI setup and I could boot into the cloned partion.

Maybe this helps someone else.

Regards,

Jürgen

jba
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