BCDboot

Redo a clone with Clonezilla or Macrium and provide a screenshot of the disk partitions.

If I understand your tutorial correctly, Clonezilla is stand alone, meaning I should print the tutorial to follow it: 11 pages with screenshots that are unreadable (they should be printed separately); it's a bit tedious; as for the video restoration, I don’t see how I can view it while performing the operation.
First of all, to download Clonezilla, I have to choose between amd64, i686pae, and i686, as well as between auto repository, osdn, or sourceforge: what should I choose?
You only explain cloning through a system image; I don’t have a 500 GB support to store the image: how do I do disk to disk?

Moreover, the first link on your page leads to ... Renee Becca, which is the cloner I easily used; why would Clonezilla work better?

See the paragraph "Access the EFI partition" on this page: https://www.malekal.com/la-partition-efi-ou-esp/
you assign a letter with diskpart and then use the bcdboot command with the /s option and the drive letter of the EFI partition.

But I don't see the point in trying to repair the boot when the recovery partition isn't even good.
Your disk clone didn't work.
The best would be to try with Clonezilla and see what happens.

Also, you have 0 byte disks, what does that correspond to?

Hi,

You're going to say that I systematically mess up your topics, but where do you see EFI in that? Disks 0 and 2 are MS-DOS (MBR) disks.

And the "system" partition that should contain Windows doesn't have a letter assigned to it. It's not going to boot.

We can agree on one point and only one: the messed-up cloning.

@herve_be: bcdboot is unlikely to solve this issue... The contents of the "Windows" partitions aren't even identical. But if it amuses you:

diskpart
sel disk 2
sel part 2
assign letter=w
sel part 1
assign letter=s
exit

And then:

bcdboot w:\windows /l en-us /s s:

You'll see if the files are created.

Indeed, there is something strange about this cloning; I first cloned it with EaseUS Todo Backup, I got this



However, it wouldn’t boot so I tried with Renee Becca but it's not any better.
I might try again with Todo Backup, it assigned a letter A: to the system partition
otherwise, if I understood correctly with diskpart
list volume
select volume x <= that of the EFI partition
assign letter Z
then BCDboot A:\Windows /Z:

There is NO EFI partition. The cloning was indeed better. And there, you had to type (if you want a z)

diskpart
sel disk 6
sel part 1
assign letter=z
exit

And

bcdboot a:\windows /l fr-fr /s z:

But it should have worked directly. But with all the mess you have in there and the numerous active partitions, are you even sure you were booting from the right disk?

Take a screenshot of all that...

Which screen?
With the disk manager, on my SSD, I assigned the letter Z to the "system reserved" partition and Y to the next one that contains the Windows directory.
bcdboot Y:\windows /l fr-fr /s Z: ==> Failed to copy boot files.

Since my system HDD (0) that contains Windows is working, I also tried
bcdboot C:\windows /l fr-fr /s Z:
same result.

bcdboot y:\windows /l fr-fr /s z: /v

It should return the error details... You never know. We might get some info.

I think that evidently, he can't find the source files to copy... Keep trying, but I doubt it will work. Apparently, the cloning loses files along the way.

I fully agree with this judgment:

https://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=21974277#p21974277

This message isn't necessarily about the boot configuration being wrong...
It can happen, for example, when the Windows registry files are damaged.

As I've told you several times, your cloning didn't work, so I don't see why you keep trying to fix something that's beyond repair.
Test with Clonezilla.

I'm willing to try with Clonezilla, but it's strange that cloning wouldn't be correct either with Renee Becca or Aesus Todo Backup.
Clonezilla seems very user-unfriendly; you didn't answer my questions from message #4.

To download Clonezilla, one must choose between amd64, i686pae, and i686, and also between auto repository, osdn, or sourceforge: what should I choose?
If I understand your tutorial correctly, Clonezilla is stand alone, meaning I should print the tutorial to follow it: 11 pages with screenshots that can't be read (they should be printed separately); it's a bit tedious. As for the video restoration, I don't see how I could watch it while performing the operation.

You only explain cloning via a system image; I don’t have a 500 GB drive to store the image: how do I do disk-to-disk?

Re,

I advise you to test a clean installation on this SSD. This will ensure that there are no issues. After that, if you want to try cloning again, you can always do it.

I don’t believe at all that it’s a backup software issue (even if not all use the same copying strategy). But well, it’s better to make sure of that too. Try Clonezilla, Macrium, etc.

I won't go further into this topic. You wanted details on bcdboot, you have them... we (collaboratively) told you it was probably unnecessary, and you’ve seen that for yourself.

https://forums.commentcamarche.net/forum/affich-35589217-bcdboot#5

Reinstall something clean, it will benefit you all around.

As explained earlier, you need to reinstall Windows or it's dead; it's quite simple to understand that your cloning contains an error and it will never work.

As explained above, reinstalling Windows is not an acceptable solution because it would also require me to reinstall all my software, and since it's currently working...
I don't understand why the "starter" can't find a file that is indeed located on the SSD in the same directory as my functioning HDD.

Cloning would not be correct with Renee Becca or Aesus Todo Backup, but let's assume: what can be used to create a proper clone?

Reinstalling Windows is not an acceptable solution because it would also force me to reinstall all my software.


You misread, we suggested installing Windows to check that the installation doesn't fail, basically to ensure there isn't a problem with the SSD that could explain these bad disk clones.

Before doing this, try changing the order of the drives in the BIOS boot. You will know if the cloning of disk 0 went well. The command will then be unnecessary.

Re,

Try the bcdboot command again as you intended to do. And repeat the test.

For your last message, most cloning software editors have programs that allow you to create system images.
Acronis, Eases, Macrium Reflect, etc.
Clonezilla does it too.
See here: https://www.malekal.com/windows/sauvegarde-windows/

Thank you for your response to my follow-up question; I have Easus Todo Backup.
I created a bootable DVD, and I scheduled a monthly system backup.

My main question concerns the use of BCDboot.

I initiated a manual backup with Easus at 12:45 PM.
3 hours and 30 minutes later, I still see Estimated remaining time --:--:--
and the progress bar seems to be at about 15%, which would mean over 20 hours to complete the backup!