Cloned copy of Microsoft Windows Boots to a Black Screen
Problem
You clone a copy of Windows from one hard drive to another by copying the entire disk, using disk cloning tools
The copy of Windows starts to boot, and then hangs a black screen
You may also see a mouse cursor, but other than that, Windows does not respond
The system is being booted in UEFI mode
Cause
A UEFI copied version of Windows needs to have the DOSDevices registry entries removed, as Windows will detect the disk change and try and re-enumerate the drive letters.
Instructions
Boot the system using Windows PE, and find the drive letter that holds the offline, broken copy of Windows,
Use the attached Bootfix utility - run the command below, where f: is the drive containing the non-working copy of Windows
bootfix f: -all
This will delete the entries in the f:\Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM registry file > MountedDevices key
