Cloned Windows 10 installation booting but doesn't finish loading.

califauna · Aug 5, 2019

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.

Thanks.

axe0 · Aug 9, 2019

Trying to clone Windows from one pc to another with different hardware is not going to work.

To reinstall Windows, you'll have to create Windows 10 installation media on a USB or CD using your desktop.
On the page to create Windows installation media, click Download tool now and run the downloaded tool on your desktop after inserting the USB or CD.

califauna · Aug 10, 2019

axe0 said:
Trying to clone Windows from one pc to another with different hardware is not going to work.

To reinstall Windows, you'll have to create Windows 10 installation media on a USB or CD using your desktop.
On the page to create Windows installation media, click Download tool now and run the downloaded tool on your desktop after inserting the USB or CD.

And yet here I sit writing this another working cloned operating system using the exact same two PCs ( an ASUS desktop to lenovo laptop, windows 10 1903). Cloning works. No doubt there are problems sometimes, but in my experience it always has worked, bar this particular case.

Anyone willing 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 receive 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)?

axe0 · Aug 10, 2019

First time I'm hearing that, but there's a first time for everything.

There's something I would like you to try, are you familiar with the recovery environment and specifically how to get there?
In the recovery environment there is Startup Settings which you could use to enable boot logging, safe mode and other options. I'm interested in boot logging and safe mode to see what gets loaded at boot and if safe mode works.

califauna · Aug 19, 2019

Thanks for that suggestion of the boot log file. In this case it wasn't sufficient to solve the problem as I started getting IO1Initialization errors and ended up reinstalling windows on the desktop and just doing the same thing as I usually do and cloning it to my other devices. This time it worked without any problem. Unfortunately I lost the Hyper-V machines on the lost installation though, and some other environments and software.

Using the log file I was able to identify a some driver loading issues in the old installation at boot time when it was used on the laptop and will go to that log file again if problems arise.

If anyone else attempts clones and has any issues, they should remember that when you boot the cloned drive you need to change the system identifiers (Update identifier, System Hardware ID, COmputer name, and some other optional identifiers) to avoid network clashes etc. These can all be changed at once using system ID changing software, eg. SIDCHG SID Change Utility - by Stratesave which is currently still working fine with W10 1903 update. Its automated and only takes a few minutes.https://www.stratesave.com/html/sidchg.html

Re. the IO1Initialization error, something was causing the installations on my SSDs to become corrupt when I had two or more of them attached to my desktop. Haven't been able to find out why. Doesnt appear to be related with clonging the drives. I just know that all of a sudden whenever booting the PC or shutting down with 2 or more of my SSDs attached one or both were failing to boot next time when used as the boot deivce, giving the IO1initialization error. NO DISM, SFC or bootrec repair methods worked. System restore also wasn't an option as the corruption also was causing system restore on the affected drives to become turned off, thus deleting all restore points. Horrible. Virus like symptoms.

writhziden · Aug 19, 2019

axe0 said:
Trying to clone Windows from one pc to another with different hardware is not going to work.

That was my experience as well. I suspect chipset drivers being installed can cause a lot of issues when trying to image across different hardware. I am surprised califauna was able to Frankenstein systems from other systems. I would personally be apprehensive that the systems might not run as smoothly as a cleanly installed OS with the correct foundation of drivers, but kudos to califauna for making it work.

A safer method for creating system images with software set up as I like it was to create a VirtualBox system and generate my system image from that. As I find software/settings I want to change on my normal machine, I update the VirtualBox image accordingly (after taking a virtual snapshot to return to the last known good image as a precaution). Since VirtualBox does not require chipset drivers, everything tends to go smoothly.

axe0 · Aug 20, 2019

I suspect it wouldn't be limited to chipset drivers, but could include any boot driver interfacing with hardware (e.g. network drivers, 3rd party keyboard driver (if needed), video driver, ...)

IO1Initialization error, that's an incredibly rare BSOD for good reasons too as it could indicate improper setup configuration which doesn't happen when you normally install Windows and not clone a copy or deploy a backup on a different pc. That would explain why tools like DISM, SFC or bootrec don't help. Bootrec only helps when the issue is with the first parts of the boot process, when the boot sector and BCD are still doing their things. The IO initialization is somewhere in the middle of the boot process or near the final part if I'm not mistaken.

califauna · Aug 20, 2019

writhziden said:
That was my experience as well. I suspect chipset drivers being installed can cause a lot of issues when trying to image across different hardware. I am surprised califauna was able to Frankenstein systems from other systems. I would personally be apprehensive that the systems might not run as smoothly as a cleanly installed OS with the correct foundation of drivers, but kudos to califauna for making it work.

A safer method for creating system images with software set up as I like it was to create a VirtualBox system and generate my system image from that. As I find software/settings I want to change on my normal machine, I update the VirtualBox image accordingly (after taking a virtual snapshot to return to the last known good image as a precaution). Since VirtualBox does not require chipset drivers, everything tends to go smoothly.

The 4 drives I suddenly started getting the error on weren't all cloned drives (two of them were your standard type installations) so for sure it's not the mere fact of the drive being booted being a cloned installation.

It was wierd. THere are always at least 3 drives running in my PC (two data and one OS). It only happened when I connected other drives with Windows on them, which meant there were at least two drives with Windows installations connected to the SATA ports on my PC at the same time (again, sometimes the running OS was a 'normal' installation, which then gave that error the next time I tried to boot it). Sometimes I was only connecting the drives in order to transfer data between them and stuff like that. ABout the timing of it, it was kind of contrary in my case. THe IO1 error appeared about 2 or 3 seconds into the boot, just after the windows spinning dots appeared. THe boot normally takes around 15 seconds to get to log in screen after BIOS on my PC. Regarding SFC and DISM, they returned with confirmations that no changes were necessary. Tried a bunch of stuff and gave up. I'm curious though becasue Ill be wary of attaching drives to my PC until I find out the cause.

writhziden · Aug 20, 2019

califauna said:
The 4 drives I suddenly started getting the error on weren't all cloned drives (two of them were your standard type installations) so for sure it's not the mere fact of the drive being booted being a cloned installation.

It was wierd. THere are always at least 3 drives running in my PC (two data and one OS). It only happened when I connected other drives with Windows on them, which meant there were at least two drives with Windows installations connected to the SATA ports on my PC at the same time (again, sometimes the running OS was a 'normal' installation, which then gave that error the next time I tried to boot it). Sometimes I was only connecting the drives in order to transfer data between them and stuff like that. ABout the timing of it, it was kind of contrary in my case. THe IO1 error appeared about 2 or 3 seconds into the boot, just after the windows spinning dots appeared. THe boot normally takes around 15 seconds to get to log in screen after BIOS on my PC. Regarding SFC and DISM, they returned with confirmations that no changes were necessary. Tried a bunch of stuff and gave up. I'm curious though becasue Ill be wary of attaching drives to my PC until I find out the cause.

I have not encountered a case like that, but I always connect drives that have Windows installations after boot via external enclosures and not via SATA before boot. Maybe the multiple boot configurations are somehow overwriting each other?

califauna · Aug 20, 2019

writhziden said:
A safer method for creating system images with software set up as I like it was to create a VirtualBox system and generate my system image from that. As I find software/settings I want to change on my normal machine, I update the VirtualBox image accordingly (after taking a virtual snapshot to return to the last known good image as a precaution). Since VirtualBox does not require chipset drivers, everything tends to go smoothly.

I like this idea. I'll try it this way some time. Personally I haven't had unmanageable problems with doing it the way I describe so I'll continue to do it for the moment because working on the virtual machine I have installed (at least on my system) is noticeably slower than working on the real desktop.

califauna · Aug 20, 2019

writhziden said:
Maybe the multiple boot configurations are somehow overwriting each other?

Maybe, but I dont know why. I think on some occasions all I was doing was transferring data between the drives. I guess if the disk signatures were identical it could cause problems if the OS is trying to write something to a disk but whenever cloning I choose the option of leaving the disk signatures as they are (whenever that option appears). I was thinking maybe a virus or perhaps the Intel 6G SATA controller was having issues handling two SDDs for some reason (it is a nice MB but long in the tooth now). MB is a Rampage 3 Extreme.

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Cloned Windows 10 installation booting but doesn't finish loading.

califauna

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axe0

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califauna

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axe0

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califauna

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writhziden

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axe0

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califauna

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califauna

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califauna

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Cloned Windows 10 installation booting but doesn't finish loading.

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Administrator, BSOD Academy Instructor, Security Analyst

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Administrator, BSOD Academy Instructor, Security Analyst

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Administrator, .NET/UWP Developer

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BSOD Academy Instructor,
Security Analyst

Administrator,
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