Vista 64-Bit Error on Boot after Clone

[Doctor Micro]

Ran into this issue and got it fixed, but thought I'd pass on what happened, the symptoms and the fix in case any of you run into the same thing.

PC: HP MediaCenter PC
OS: Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit
HDD: Single 750GB SATA-2
RAM: 3GB

Background: Motherboard died; warranty replacement by HP techs. Prior to HP warranty service, I made a backup of the customers data and a full image of their hard drive. After the motherboard replacement, the HP techs had trouble booting into the original configuration, asked the customer if they had a backup, customer said yes, so the HP techs initiated a full factory restore.

The customer was upset because although their data could be restored, all their programs were gone. Most they had original CDs for, and some they still had the downloaded installer files in their download directory, some they did not. In any case, the factory restore still would require reinstallation of SP1, and a large number of MS updates and patches, plus the reinstallation of all their software, plus service packs and updates (Office, Quicken, etc.).

Since their PC was fairly new and they were a mature couple who did not do a lot of creative surfing or downloading a bunch of junk programs and the system had been working prior to the motherboard failure, I suggested we restore the image.

Took the machine back to the shop. Restored their image to another hard drive of the same size off of my lab machine, unplugged their drive, plugged in the new drive and the machine booted. Great.

I updated the machine to SP2, updated Office to SP2, updated several other programs, removed Norton Systemworks (expired license), did a general cleanup and defrag, tweaked the registry and services a tiny bit, installed a new antivirus and antispyware program and the system was running sweet.

Okay, now to swap drives. Made another image of the new drive (WD), pulled their drive (Hitachi) out of the case and mounted both on my lab machine. Did a drive-to-drive clone, set the drive active and put their (now cloned) drive back in. Powered up... and no boot.

The error message was missing or corrupt \windows\system32\winload.exe 0xc000000e.

Hmmm...

A little websearch turned up a number of posts about this error, and apparently it often occurs after a clone. Most people suggested adding a script to their PE disk, or loading off a BART PE disk and running several scripts. A lot of trouble I thought, but before I did that, I broke out my trusty lab copy of Vista Ultimate 64-bit DVD and asked it to repair. It immediately told me it found two problems with the boot environment and did I want to fix it?

Hell, yes!

No more than 10 seconds later, it said repairs were completed, remove the media and reboot.

Problem solved. PC how booting happily. I'm a happy camper and so will by customers be when I bring their fully restored PC back with all their programs and data. Whew!

 

[NickCat11]

That's good to know. Thanks for the info. I still don't understand why that error would occur with a drive to drive clone...

 

[Doctor Micro]

From what I read in the posts, it's happened with restoring a drive from an image also... not just a drive to drive clone. Appears to be a Vista issue, and affects 32-bit versions also.

 

[NYJimbo]

A lot of trouble I thought, but before I did that, I broke out my trusty lab copy of Vista Ultimate 64-bit DVD and asked it to repair. It immediately told me it found two problems with the boot environment and did I want to fix it?

Hell, yes!

No more than 10 seconds later, it said repairs were completed, remove the media and reboot.

What always bothers me about these fixes is that it will work for YOU, but not for ME. I mean, I have done so many of these weird post-cloning fixes to get a drive working and in the process found countless posts on forums how to fix that one particular problem, but they don't always work.

Its a shame that MS Vista or XP doesn't tell us what it fixed, as is in your case. Even though we might not be able to offer some kind of "operator intervention" during the recovery, it would be nice to know what it did and if the same thing happens to John Doe on another forum he would see the same result so we could add it to our knowledge base and not just to our "magic fix" tales. I really hate it when I have to tell someone "It just kinda fixed itself".

 

[Doctor Micro]

What always bothers me about these fixes is that it will work for YOU, but not for ME. I mean, I have done so many of these weird post-cloning fixes to get a drive working and in the process found countless posts on forums how to fix that one particular problem, but they don't always work.

Its a shame that MS Vista or XP doesn't tell us what it fixed, as is in your case. Even though we might not be able to offer some kind of "operator intervention" during the recovery, it would be nice to know what it did and if the same thing happens to John Doe on another forum he would see the same result so we could add it to our knowledge base and not just to our "magic fix" tales. I really hate it when I have to tell someone "It just kinda fixed itself".

I hear you there, Jimbo. I wish now I'd written down the Vista repair message, but it was a little more detailed than just "we found some errors, do you want to fix them?" If I recall, one was something about the boot environment pointing to an empty string. I may be guessing here, but I got the impression I was looking at a cleaned-up GUI version of XP's command console fixboot and fixmbr.

On the subject of cloning, I've learned the hard way that if you do anything other than a sector-by-sector clone, you're asking for trouble, as the "data only" cloning methods tend to miss stuff. I also have had occasional cloning problems when running the cloning software from within the OS GUI instead of booting from say, an Acronis CD.