Cloned drive has no operating system detected

After cloning a windows hard disc drive (HDD) to a faster solid state drive (SSD) the 1 :1 replacement does not work. There was “no operating system” found.
The solution was that the correct partition has to be set active and the BCD (boot configuration data) has to be rebuild.

Step by step:

  • Start the PC from a Windows DVD or use a bootable USB Stick with an Windows image
  • Select “Repair Your Computer”
  • Select “Command Prompt”
    • diskpart
      • list disk
      • select disk X (where X is the number of the SSD)
      • list partition
      • select partition Y (where Y is the number of the “big part” which contains the operating system)
      • active
      • exit
    • diskpart
      • list disk
      • select disk X (where X is the number of the SSD)
      • list vol
      • sel vol Y (where Y is the number of the EFI partition, in this case ~100MB)
      • assign letter=V:
      • exit
    • V:
    • format V: /FS:FAT32
      • enter the name of the partition. Can be looked up at “list vol” in diskpart
      • enter a new name: “ASDF”
    • bcdboot C:\windows /s V: /f UEFI
  • Shutdown
  • Remove bootable media
  • Start PC > should work now!

The partition with the boot configuration is now visible. The hide follow this steps:

  • Windows+X > Disk Management
  • Right click on the “ASDF” partiton > Change Drive Letter and Paths…
  • Select letter and remove

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