Restore Image NOT yeilding a bootable copy of BOOTCAMP with Winclone 7

aadams77 · January 23, 2020, 11:39pm

Dear Twocanoes Support-

I have been at this for several days now…I thought I caught a break when I read:

“New in Winclone 7.3.2

Fixed issue with booting after restoring an image of Windows 7 on some older Macs.”

(…and, sadly, that now appears to STILL not have yielded a working restored copy of my Windows 7 BOOTCAMP backup.)

So, let me walk this back with as many (hopefully useful) details as I can. Several months ago I did a “Create Image from Volume” back-up of my Windows 7 BOOTCAMP partition using Winclone Pro 7.1.1 on my “17-inch, Early 2011” MBP running (and ceilinged at) High Sierra 10.13.6.

Several days ago I attempted to “Restore Image” using the same copy of Winclone Pro 7.1.1. I tried this TWO(2) times and now ONE(1) time after updating to the latest Winclone Pro 7.3.4…all with the same result:

Winclone Pro 7 reports that the process completed successfully each time.

2a) I can see and select the restored partition “BOOTCAMP” under Startup Disk with Windows indicated below…but when I try selecting and booting into Windows 7 I get a black screen with: “No bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key”.

2b) I do NOT see the BOOTCAMP partition when restarting and holding down the Option key.

After restoring the volume, I have tried BOTH “Make Legacy Bootable…” and “Make EFI Bootable…” in Winclone 7 and neither has produced a bootable BOOTCAMP result.

4a) I tried booting my computer with a Windows 7 installer DVD, I clicked the “Repair your computer” link on the 2nd screen. In the next screen (in the “System Recovery Options” window) I don’t see my BOOTCAMP operating system listed, so I tried inserting the USB I created in Boot Camp Assistant and “Downloaded the latest Windows support software from Apple”, I clicked the “Load Drivers” and selected “BootCamp -> setup.exe”, but I get a “The specified location does not contain information about your hardware.” error message.

4b) Even though my BOOTCAMP operating system is NOT listed, I tried selecting the “Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows.” option from the “System Recovery Options” window and let the Windows 7 installer do it’s thing for a few restarts with no positive result.

Some ADDITIONAL (hopefully useful) background infos:

I tried scrapping the recovery option and going with a “fresh” install, but I didn’t get very far with that one either.

In Boot Camp Assistant I get a “The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition” message and the “Install or remove Windows 7 or Windows 8” option is grayed out.
Again when booting from the Windows 7 installer and this time attempting to move forward with a fresh installation, I selected “Custom (advanced)” option and the BLANK (FAT 32 formatted) BOOTCAMP drive but got a: “Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The selected disk has the maximum number of partitions of this type.”

I have THREE partitions on my MBP: one for High Sierra (my daily use partition), one for Snow Leopard (my legacy partition) and one for BOOTCAMP. After doing a little legwork online, I am pretty certain this is the reason that I am not getting any further with Boot Camp Assistant (as I recall, I originally set BOOTCAMP using the Boot Camp Assistant from a single partition and THEN split off a 3rd partition from my original MacOS…and I suspect that this MAY also be the issue I am seeing with Windows 7.

When I go into Terminal and enter diskutil list, this is the result:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Snow Leopard drive 350.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS High Sierra drive 496.8 GB disk0s3
4: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s4
5: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 149.7 GB disk0s5

LONG story short, I would REALLY like to be able to get a working copy of Windows back onto my MBP…preferably restoring my Winclone Pro 7 back-up. I suspect that my ONLY avenue to a “fresh” install may be to combine all three of my existing partitions into one…and that’s going to be a total NON-starter because I am not prepared to scrap the content of my Snow Leopard drive. The only route that I can see forward is to either: a) restoring my Windows 7 backup using Winclone Pro 7…or b) scrapping the idea of restoring a working BOOTCAMP drive on my aging (but STILL daily/primary) MBP.

I REALLY, REALLY DO appreciate any help that you might be able to provide (and THANK YOU for your time in reading)!

BEST regards,

-Alan

Spanman · January 28, 2020, 10:20am

Hi Alan,

Same problem I have and other people have too.

Seems that Winclone has a problem that has not been solved for some time.

aadams77 · February 5, 2020, 5:36am

Any possible suggestion or solution on the horizon?

Best regards,

-Alan

aadams77 · February 24, 2020, 2:09am

It’s been exactly one month since my original post here. I took considerable time and effort to try and troubleshoot the issue and post what I had hoped would be some useful information above. I am really quite disappointed that I haven’t received SOME kind of reply from Twocanoes Support by now!

-Alan

tperfitt · February 25, 2020, 8:35pm

Sorry I have not responded. I have tested migration of Windows 7 here in our lab and it has been working fine. There must be something different in the setup. Any ideas on how I can replicate your issue so I can fix it?

tim

aadams77 · February 26, 2020, 11:26pm

Tim-

Thank you SO MUCH for your kind reply! In my OP, I tried to compile as comprehensive a beginning to the troubleshooting process as I could. The initial back-up of my Windows 7 BOOTCAMP partition was performed using Winclone Pro 7.1.1. I tried a couple of times to “Restore Image” using that same copy of Winclone Pro and then updated to v7.3.4 when I had noticed:

“New in Winclone 7.3.2

Fixed issue with booting after restoring an image of Windows 7 on some older Macs.”

Is there anything that you’d recommend that I could do on my end to further troubleshoot things? As I noted, the Windows 7 installer is not even recognizing the restored Windows 7 BOOTCAMP partition. Should it? Does that tell us anything useful?

As Spanman had indicated above, he too is experiencing a similar issue. I would be very happy to further troubleshoot the issue with your guidance, but I am at a loss as what the next step(s) might without some guidance.

Best regards,

-Alan

tperfitt · February 28, 2020, 7:01pm

Was this an upgraded version of Windows 7? What version did you start from? Is it 32 bit or 64 bit? What is the original mac hardware you installed it on? If you can give me a idea of how it was installed originally and updated, I can replicate this and fix it.

tim