Sorry, my bad. I think that I went astray in message 11. I was so excited seeing the drive in Ghost; I became blind to your recommendations that followed. I thought that I could just run the drive copy wizard and that would be all that there was to it.
I’ll take the easy path and follow the instructions in the TeraByte link "BOOTMGR is missing" from your previoous message. I have couple of questions.
1) Will I need to use DISKPART to verify the partition is still active and if so, should I refer to Note C for instructions?
2) More importantly, I can’t find the Window’s 7 installation disk to use as the repair disk. Being a Dell laptop, I am not sure if it even came with one. All the software came preloaded and I can only find the product keys for programs like office but, no Window’s 7 installation disk. I do have a Window’s 7 Ultimate installation disk that is 32 bit however; the laptop is a 64 bit version of Window’s Home Premium. Can I use that?
"BOOTMGR is missing" means just that. The Boot folder is also missing. These files make up the booting files and yours are in the Recovery partition. Courtesy of Dell. The DVD repair should create booting files and allow Win7 on the SSD to boot. All done!.
This time I followed the instructions as outlined and it did work! That is as far as booting into Windows.
I think that something was corrupted in the Copy My Hard Drive process. When it was in the process of loading Windows, it stalled a bit and said something to the effect of it was rearranging the desktop and then it went to a flat blue screen (unlike the blue screen of death) that said in the corner something like… This is an invalid copy of Windows 7. I rebooted it again. This time it booted directly without the need to use the repair disk. However, the process ended with the same screen. I speculated that something went wrong with the Copy My Hard Drive function in Ghost. When I ran the Copy My Hard Drive again, it gave me the following error message at the end…
Cannot Complete Copying of OS (C :/) Drive.
Cannot copy source drive to destination location
ERROR EBA B03EE: OPERATING SYSTEM API 1004 FAILED
ERROR EBA B03EE: THE PARAMETER IS INCORRECT
(UMI: V-0-3215-6067)
I have attached a screen shot that shows the message with greater detail.
I think that I must I may have not have setup the SSD properly when I ran the Copy My Hard Drive process the second time.
You need to do the disk copy into unallocated space. Both times you had the destination drive partitioned and it had a drive letter other than C.
The screenshot shows you trying to copy into the "E" drive of the SSD. The error on the first copy about "windows not genuine" is also caused by the same problem.
Delete the partition on the SSD so the drive is all empy unallocated space and then try again.
Then boot the SSD all by it'self and if it does not boot run a startup repair twice.
This time I followed the instructions as outlined and it did work! That is as far as booting into Windows.
I think that something was corrupted in the Copy My Hard Drive process. When it was in the process of loading Windows, it stalled a bit and said something to the effect of it was rearranging the desktop and then it went to a flat blue screen (unlike the blue screen of death) that said in the corner something like… This is an invalid copy of Windows 7. I rebooted it again. This time it booted directly without the need to use the repair disk. However, the process ended with the same screen. I speculated that something went wrong with the Copy My Hard Drive function in Ghost. When I ran the Copy My Hard Drive again, it gave me the following error message at the end…
Steve,
This thread is a classic in what not to do. The error you described above is due to copying into a partition with a drive letter. It could have been fixed in a few minutes but you did another Copy Drive instead.
I'm happy to continue this thread but only if you follow my advice and make no decisions on you own.
What I failed to mention about rerunning the disk copy, was that I did it around post 11. That was before I got your thrashing. Since then, I have been listening and the results have been positive. When I ran the disk copy as instructed, I changed the default “E” drive assignment to “none”, the copy succeeded!
I then used the Window’s 7 Repair disk as instructed. Well, all I can say, is that I am responding to this posting on my laptop with a new solid state drive installed. I can now make bonehead decisions at breakneck speeds!
Thank you so much for your patience. It goes unsaid, that I could not have done it without your help.
Excellent news and thanks for letting us know. Enjoy your SSD!
Both Dave and I doubted that your method would work for reasons outlined in Message #4 but you must have had fortunate sector spread. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
You don't have the Dell Diagnostic partition (102 MB) but that doesn't really matter as you can run diagnostics from your Dell CD.