Paragon 14 Free - No Boot Device Found After Image Restore

That's bad. Win7 will not boot from that empty partition.
Over to TRF.

 

Doesn't boot. Now it says:

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Cntl + Alt + Del to restart

 

Interesting. Try this in Diskpart...

Code:

list volume
select volume 2
active

Does Win7 boot?

 

No. Still no boot. Now it says:

An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system.
Press Cntl + Alt + Del to restart

 

Ok. Awaiting TRF.

 

As Bryan heads to bed <nitey-nite>, we'll see if we can get this thing running. First, let's rid ourselves of that 10gB empty partition you created earlier. Second, we need to make sure that none of the remaining SSD partitions are ACTIVE (using whatever tool you are using). Third, we need to install all the files needed to make your OS partition BOOTable (these are the files that may have been available in your System Reserved partition when the System was built)... this may be done with the following command in a Command Prompt window... make sure you select the VOLUME which is now the OS volume after your above deletion...

bcdboot c:\Windows /s C:

If the OS partition has a different drive letter than C: (after the deletion above) use what's now correct for the OS partition.

Now make the OS partition ACTIVE. At this point it should be the only ACTIVE partition on your SSD. Remove the utility volume you're currently using (ActiveBootDisk on USB or CD/DVD?) for this work and reBOOT back into your BiOS. Make sure your SSD is the first device in your BOOT list (other than a USB disk or CD/DVD if you're using those devices as BOOT devices... they should be first), now reBOOT your System. If all worked as expected, your System should BOOT just fine.

If it does, there is something you should do while running under the OS to insure Windows 7 is handling the SSD correctly... we'll do that after it's running once again.

Good luck!

 

Hmmmm... just noticed, it looks like David's been up all night as well, mirroring Bryan who's on the other side of the world in New South Wales.

Sleep well, guys!

 

Success! It's back up and running now. Thanks guys!

TRF, what was that last thing you mentioned that I need to do?

 

Yay that'll show the ghost in the machine.

 

Windows 7 is a neophyte at detecting and configuring SSDs correctly. If you CleanInstall Windows 7 on an SSD it works just fine. If you image an SSD from an old HDD image, there are issues.

Easiest way to deal with any SSD issues is as follows...

<RightClick> on your DeskTop "Computer" icon and select "Properties." In the Properties window, just below the "Systems" section (on the "Rating" line), <click> on the "Windows Experience" LINK. In the window provided, write down and post the Primary HardDisk subscore, then <click> on the "Refresh Now" button. The System will now run through the Windows Experience Index routines and re-rate your System. The sub-score mentioned above should wind up in the high 7s... if it does, Windows 7 now understands that you have an SSD installed in your System, you're good to go.

The OS should manage your SSD pretty well from here on, but if you'd like to assist that OS mgmt, you should run the application SSDtool.exe located at the LINK below...

http://www.windows98.co.uk/ssd/downloads/ssdtool.exe

This tool acts exactly like the Optimize function used by Windows 10... an occasional run never hurts. You should also make sure that any "automatic" disk defragging, under Windows 7, is turned off on your System... not good for SSDs.

...and your System should be pretty darn quick at this point!

 

David, currently you have a single partition bootable System as far as Windows is concerned. I believe your previous System had a 2-partition bootable System but one of the partitions didn't make it into your original image.

Probably best to re-image your SSD and you should only need your OS partition in the image for a backup bootable System.

 

Nice work guys. It's very satisfying to make a non-booting system bootable.

Dell originally had booting files in a 100 MB partition (Win7). Later, Dell moved the booting files to the Recovery partition so 4 partition slots wouldn't be in use. The Recovery partition became the Active System partition.

Here is a thread from 2014...

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/do-i-need-to-image-the-dell-utility.371250/

 

Thanks again, Brian and TRF. This is awesome! My old PC back to where it was and better! At times, I considered doing a fresh Win 7 or Win 10 install, but I dreaded all the work of configuring it the way I like it.

Omitting the small partition was a rookie error on my part. I will definitely do fresh images of all my PCs after this. Funny thing is that I did a restore on another PC without any problems about 3 or 4 years ago. I guess I wasn't consistent in my error.

 

David, as you have found, the best item you can put in your computer to improve performance is a SSD.

We have a couple of 10 year old computers with i3 Intel CPUs. Each has a HD and a SSD. I installed Win11 to the HDs and the OS performance was so slow as to be unusable. The OS was copied from the HD to the SSD and now the performance is fine. Quite acceptable. My wife uses one of the computers as her main computer.

 

Windows knows how to defrag SSDs.
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/the-real-and-complete-story-does-windows-defragment-your-ssd

 

The operative words in my post are Under Windows 7. Your post is absolutely correct for modern Windows, but is not correct for W07, the OS SSDs were introduced under. All W07 knew how to do was discover an SSD during it's build and turn on TRIM, nothing more. Once built, storage devices were managed as normal HDDs 'cept for TRIM... defrag included.

That's why the cautions and slight config control offered the OP.

 

@TRF My SSD gets fragmented under W7. When it gets to 4-6% fragmentation. Windows explorer & larger files take longer to open & be ready. If you had to what free defragger would you recommend? TY

 

@zapjb - that should not be happening at all at 4-6% fragmentation. Remember, there's no mechanical movement associated with SSD sector access when it's "fragmented" (4-6% is nothing even for HDDs), only electronic indexing through metafiles... things should not be noticeably longer in time unless you have a really, really old computer (and I don't suspect you'll notice it there either at 4-6%).

I would suggest doing a single defrag on the SSD, followed by the suggestion I made to the OP in Post #35 above...

 

The basic Windows defragger would be more than adequate in W07 for that SSD. If you really want to use a free 3rd party one, I have used "MyDefrag" for years (see link below)

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/mydefrag.html/

...when managing SSDs, a single run on an SSD won't hurt anything under Windows 7.

 

@davidzz - if that restore was done on the original disk rather than a new <BLANK> disk, it would have worked just fine... why, because the 2nd required partition needed for BOOTing would still be on the disk. Your experience above was primarily due to a restoration to a new <BLANK> disk WITHOUT that needed 2nd partition.

This is a fairly common problem for users who may not have extensive knowledge about System reconstruction. They learn about imaging before they really understand System structures and they don't really know what's needed for complete System reconstruction. Consider yourself lucky (and you've learned a lot here)... but wait until you ever have to reconstruct an UEFI-GPT System, lots of stuff to worry about there For those types of Systems, you should image the complete factory System disk, all partitions, at least once for archival purposes. That way you'll have any needed piece for later reconstructions if your follow-on images are not of the full disk.

 

I did those. The SSD tool is amazing I noticed a difference right away. I do have an older laptop ThinkPad e540. But I like it a lot. Only thing is not all modern emojis work on W7.

 

If the SSDtool made a big difference (after you ran the new Windows Experience Index), my guess is that Windows 7 had not detected your SSD as a SSD and, accordingly, was not using TRIM to allow the SSD to internally manage itself. If that was the case, the SSD would have been carrying around a lot of old, undeleted DATA, possibly filling the device up to the point where it had to use very inefficient writing techniques to add any new DATA of any kind. Once TRIM has been activated and the SSDtool run, all those internal SSD blocks with old DATA in them will get cleaned up and made available for efficient internal writing.

 

If that is the case. How do I know whether it is now detected as an SSD?

 

Bring up a COMMAND PROMPT "as Administrator" and execute the following command...

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If the value = 0, TRIM is ENABLED... if it's = 1, TRIM is DISABLED.

That's the only thing that Windows 7 really knows about an SSD, and using the TRIM command will allow the SSD to manage itself very well internally.

 

TY. 0 so TRIM is enabled.