Windows Server 2019 won't boot after SATA to NVMe Clone with CloneZilla

Operating Systems & Open Source Windows
1

I have a machine running Windows Server 2019 on an M.2 SATA SSD. I cloned the entire SSD to a new NVMe SSD, but now it won’t boot on the NVMe SSD

It gets to the spinning circles and sits there for a few mins, rebooted, tries again and then dumps me into system recovery

I tried bcdboot X:\Windows /s X: /f UEFI replacing the drive letters with the correct ones, but no luck

My skills on windows booting are lacking, I used to work Helpdesk and do this stuff every day, but no more! I am rusty with UEFI too

Is this a common situation when cloning with CloneZilla? Can anyone suggest another tool?

I did this once before with Macrium Relfect and it worked perfectly, however I have used up the one free trial for Macrium Business Edition (Because of Windows Server!) on this machine a long long time ago. Are there any other good tools like Macrium that would yield better results?

Its a giant pain to work on this box, as I need to physically go to the server rack, plug in a monitor and mess with it, it has no IMPI or remote managment

The reason is its running a consumer Motherboard, as I need Intel QuickSync for Blue Iris

Would love any suggestions or even just moral support :rofl:

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2

Not an issue I’ve seen recently with clonezilla. Could be worth disabling secure boot and clearing TPM cache(if motherboard supports this).

Have you tried booting a fresh windows install or Linux distro from the nvme?

3

Turns out Macrium changed enough they let me get the Server trial again, so that makes things easier

I have the NVMe in a USB adapter when cloning, so when it finished with Macrium I rebooted, and selected the boot device to the be the NVMe drive still in the USB drive, and it booted just fine!

So, I swapped it out, and then it doesn’t boot… My thinking is there is still something wrong with the bcd config and it was seeing the old drive still in place and using that boot partition, maybe? I tried all the fixes listed and no luck.

I have not tried something else directly in the M.2 slot

My thinking is that I am going to re-clone, boot to USB and then see if I can spot the issue

4

Good idea with Secure boot, I’ll give that a go, I don’t recall if its on or off. I would think that it wouldn’t get as far as it did though, if it was a Secure boot or TPM issue

I did have Bitlocked on, but I decrypted before I started this

5

Just for my own reference, here is my current bcd config

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager

identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
path \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
bootshutdowndisabled Yes
default {current}
resumeobject {2df6484f-8494-11e9-bc25-dd28e67e8c81}
displayorder {current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader

identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.efi
description Windows Server
locale en-US
loadoptions ENABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {2df64851-8494-11e9-bc25-dd28e67e8c81}
displaymessageoverride Recovery
recoveryenabled Yes
testsigning No
isolatedcontext Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {2df6484f-8494-11e9-bc25-dd28e67e8c81}
nx OptOut

6

Okay, I think I can rule out bcd issues. I took the M.2 SATA SSD out, and booted to the NVMe SSD over USB and it worked fine

So there is something about the board stopping it from booting? Odd.

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