Let's define the story's participants for clarity.
- Old HDD/C Drive: 500GB storage, thirteen years old at most.
- New HDD/F Drive: 1TB storage, probably a few months old.
- Old Windows: The Windows installed on Old HDD.
- New Windows/Clone: The clone of Old Windows.
I used Macrium to make a clone of Old Windows to F Drive. Pretty straightforward, right? Well... no. After doing that I tested Clone and it worked. I then proceeded to delete Old Windows and wipe clean Old HDD. Then I went on to boot New Windows. It... didn't work.
It loaded that black screen with the Windows logo and proceeded into loading the blue screen that says "Loading Windows Information" or something like that. It's basically a blue screen with darker blue bars at the top and bottom and a Windows XP Pro Edition brand in the center.
My first reaction was to feel stupid for having erased Old Windows without testing Clone without Old HDD connected. Then, I figured I could repair it via "CHKDSK /r /f" commands, but no. I then finally figured Clone probably was trying to reference Old Windows' files to load (probably redirected by some system file) and wasn't finding them. That could be a symptom of bad drive naming/letter picking.
Here's how I got to that conclusion. Old Windows called itself "C Drive", and that's where all system files were. It also called New HDD "F Drive". Well, that naming also got cloned into Clone Windows making Clone Windows' drive "F Drive" and Old Windows' drive "C Drive". In my head, Clone not finding any files in "C Drive" (because again, it had been erased) was the main issue. So much so that booting up Clone actually entered me into Old Windows' system instead of Clone's. So, after feeling dumb once again for erasing Old HDD completely, I proceeded into recovering it.
The process went pretty smoothly, after looking for a truly free program to use, instead of those fake greedy frauds that are some I won't name here. Suffice to say I used Lasesoft and it worked wonderfully. I got almost all my data back with no corruption on what survived.
Moving my files back to Old HDD went smoothly as well, and after that, I booted up Old Windows. Blue Screen. No surprises there, probably some file got corrupt. It wouldn't fix itself by rebooting or entering Safe Mode. "Ok", I said to myself, "Let's try Clone". It booted successfully.
I proceeded to change the drive letters on the registry, which is pretty straightforward. I rebooted it successfully. Then, instead of dumbly erasing Old HDD again, I simply disconnected it. Trying to load Clone now is resulting in a Blue Screen, but it happens so fast I can't even read it.
If I plug Old HDD back in I can still open Windows XP.
I did all the file moving operation from Windows 10, which is installed inside a separate SSD. The Registry modification was executed inside Clone itself.
If anything is unclear, feel free to point it out and ask for more information. I'll happily give it. Thanks for your help and time.
