Cloned disk fails to boot.

From time to time, I change the OS/boot disk in a computer so I insert an Active Boot Disk (rescue disk) into the computer, boot from it and then image the whole drive to an external USB drive. Then I change the OS/boot disk to the new one and restore the whole disk to the new drive using the same boot disk.

Sometimes this works perfectly and sometimes it just fails to boot into Windows (W10 in this case), usually booting to a screen offering various repair and recovery options. The is not unique to Active Disk Image. It would happen also with Acronis TrueImage and that is why I switched to Active Disk Image several years ago AND switched to doing all images from a boot CD instead of from the Windows GUI.

It happened again last Wednesday in an HP Pavilion Laptop, Model DM4-1160us (i7 CPU M640, 8G RAM) when I switched from a Crucial 500GB SSD to a Samsung 2TB SSD.

I think this might be related but I don't know how: When I attempted to use the six factory recovery disks to restore the computer to its new-out-of-box state, I got a similar type of failure to boot into Windows with a message "Restoration Incomplete" and an option to "Cancel" and "Try Again". Neither trying again nor starting all over from scratch did any good so I installed Windows 10 from scratch.

 

Why do you keep on changing the OS in your computer ? Any special program to run ?

 

I don't understand your question. You seem to thing I change the OS. I have not.

 

You need to disable secure boot to boot from the cloned drive. Else you need to switch to legacy, fresh install on new, then lock down, and then move your data across from old drive.

 

rsinfo, you missed the crux of Alex's problem.
[QUOTEI change the OS/boot disk in a computer][/QUOTE].

But like you, I can't see the value in this exercise ----- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

 

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But like you, I can't see the value in this exercise ----- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"[/QUOTE]I think you missed something, too. I increased the size of the disk, 500G to 2TB.

 

Those options are not available in this BIOS. I can change only the boot order.

 

Alex, apart from semantics, the word "switched" does not tell me you replaced the drive.
As Christer and Steve have pointed out regarding the danger of 2 "bootable C:" drives, I think there is a warning in the cloning process to disconnect your donor drive before Rebooting the system.
I have used AOMEI Backup which definitely warns of what to do to avoid problems.

 

To be clear, there was only one storage device involved, connected or installed when it failed to boot. Sorry, I thought that would have been apparent, especially after I said I changed from a 500G SSD to 2TB SSD.

 

Whenever I upgrade the hard disk, I always install the Windows fresh. This way all the garbage that I have picked up over the years gets thrown away and the computer performs much better.
It's a pain in the ass though.

 

I used to do that, too, sometimes even when a hard disk change wasn't being done but I have in recent years gotten better at something or Windows has gotten better at something or a little of both as I don't experience the sluggishness that seemed to gradually plague a Windows installation more and more over time.

One thing I have done in recent years is to image the drive before installing a big program I wasn't sure about whether I would keep, or before installing something I wasn't sure was safe for my system, then restore the image if I saw something I didn't like or if I just decided to not keep the the program.

I make images from time to time and usually have a few on hand and have on occasion just restored a previous image simply because I feel I've gotten too many junky programs on my system by trying out various utilities that didn't work out for me.