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 

Applies to:

• UEFI Windows server and Windows desktop