Windows 10 migration to SSD - clone and restore fail

Instead of a clone, can you take a full disk backup (making sure to boot the recovery mode in legacy mode) and then restore the backup to the new disk - making sure that the original disk is not connected via USB or anything once restored - same error or good to go then?

Also, what OS are you running.  If fastboot is enabled, it may be locking teh drive with a hibernation file when you "shut down" if fast boot is enabled.  to get around this and ensure a hibernation file is not present, you can 1) disable hibernation from command line... or 2) use command line and "shutdown /s /t 3" which forces a full shutdown using the shutdown /s option and guarnatees no hibernation file or fastboot will be used this time.

When cloning or restoring, make sure to check the box to shutdown when complete - this will give it a clean shutdown.  Otherwise, you have to hit the red x in Acronis and that may cause some issues.

After clone or restore, make sure that only the new new drive is the only attached drive (even if the original is usb external, unplug it before you boot).  Then, go straight into the bios and make sure the new drive is listed as the first boot priority.  AFter a clone or restore, the bios may move it down in priority and it could try to boot to the CD rom or a USB drive instead, which will fail, of course.

When restoring, do a full disk restore, but since this is going into the same system, you should not select MBR and track 0 when restoring to the same computer - see the manual here:  http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2017/#22719.html

On your legacy system, with a full disk recovery, you do see the system reserved parition though, correct?

Bobbo, thanks for the suggestions. Here's the further update.

To confirm; I'm running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit without fastboot enabled. It has been shut down cleanly.

I did not attempt to clone again but instead created a full disk backup (TIB file) and then ran the disk and partition recovery from ATI WINPE.

The new SSD is inside the laptop and I'm restoring from a TIB file on a separate USB drive. I did NOT select the MBR and track 0 this time around only the single "C:" partition to restore. I had the recovery process shutdown the computer after successful restore.

Once turned off I pulled the ATI bootable drive and recovery image USB drive so the only drive on the system is the internal SSD. I booted into BIOS and doublechecked the internal SSD is the priority boot device which it is.

Then after full shut down and boot the error is still happening, Windows 10 attempts to boot then blue screens with the "bad system config" error. This loops several times until it ends up at an error "0xc0000225" screen saying that the required file \windows\system32\winload.exe is missing or contains errors.

One thing to note is that the original good spindle drive that I backed up only has one partition. There is no hidden system reserved partition at all. I confirmed this by looking in Windows disk management as well as when trying to clone it through ATI WINPE; they both see only on single active partition that takes up the entire drive.

One other note though, when you boot your recovery media, are you booting it in legacy mode as well or UEFI? Take a look at the screenshots from this post to make sure you're booting in legacy mode to match your OS install.  This is important as how you boot the recovery media will determine the OS paritioning durnig recovery.  Booting recovery in legacy mode, sets the disk to MBR and booting in UEFI mode sets it to GPT/UEFI.  You usually want to keep it the same... sometimes you can go from MBR to UEFI (not always though), but you can never go from UEFI back to MBR with Acronis.

Also, take a quick look at this site (just for background):  http://www.thewindowsclub.com/system-reserved-partition-windows

What is System Reserved Partition

The System Reserved Partition holds the Boot Configuration Database, Boot Manager Code, Windows Recovery Environment and reserves space for the startup files which may be required by BitLocker, in case you use the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature.

On a normal install of Windows, even a legacy install should have a system reserved parition.  Did you ever have a dual boot OS, or use some tweak tool or manually remove it with a paritioning tool or with Windows Disk manager at some point?  I've heard of others being able to boot without it as Windows can store it on the same C: partition (recreate on C after a system repair in some cases), but have never personally seen an OS install without it.  

This may be the ultimate issue as I don't know if Acronis handles recoverying disks correctly if there is no system reserved partion to be found.  You can try the bootrec items in this third party link and see how it goes:  https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/1b2045b9-7fef-47f0-aea3-1e185fb7544c/fix-winloadexe-is-missing-or-corrupt-no-its-not?forum=itprovistasetup.  These commands often can fix boot issues.  After running them, if the system doesn't boot, try a system repair using the windows installation disc and instead of doing an install, do a repair and see if that helps.

I would also open up a support case with Acronis - even if the bootrec commands work (unless it's a matter of just needing to boot the recovery media correctly for the restore) to see if they can assist.  If there are systems that can boot without the system reserved partion, but the recovery can't handle them (and I'm not sure if this is the case or not), it's something they need to be aware to try and fix.  

REcovery support has always been covered for free, but Acronis also extended basic support to 2 years from the product release date recently so all 2016 owners have regular support through September of next year. 

One other thought.  Plug in the original drive and all other external or internal drives.  Check computer management/disk management and see if the system reserved parition lives on one of those other drives for some reason. 

Just a quick thought here, you are restoring the backup image to a different physical drive, so you should be also restoring the MBR and Track 0 data too.  This isn't needed if restoring to the same drive as should already be present, but on a new / different drive you need this data to point to the Windows boot loader.

I got this to work! Woohoo!

Here's what I did to get it to work. (Though admittedly I'm not sure what exact step fixed this for me since I had done all this before)

Hopefully this may help someone in the future.

I started from scratch and completed this entire process again.

1. Ran chkdsk /f on both the original spindle drive AND new SSD.
2. Booted into ATI WINPE and backed up complete spindle drive and partition (it contains only 1 partition) to an external USB drive as TIB file. I made sure to select the Shut down system option when complete.
3. Once the backup completed, I put the new SSD into the laptop and booted using a Windows 10 recovery USB I made earlier.  I did this in order to use diskpart from the command prompt to prep the SSD according to this guide. I really wanted to make sure the SSD was correct to begin with.
4. Next I booted using ATI WINPE. I attached the USB backup drive and selected recover drive and partition. I selected recover to the SSD both the partition AND MBR and Track 0. I also selected restore disk signature (which may be very relavant here... I had previously tried all these steps without success but this is the first time I chose the restore disk signature). I chose to shut down system when complete.
5. Once the restore completed I removed the ATI USb drive and backup image USB drive and then booted.
6. It boots like a champ now!

Like I said, I'm not really sure what ended up being different from the previous 5 attempts I made to do this, but for whatever reason it worked this time around. Thanks to Bobbo and Steve for helping me along in the right direction.

NTH, thanks for giving feedback and the results of your recovery steps - all is valuable in helping others in similar situations.

Ref the disk signature, this can be important with installed applications that rely on this for activation, but shouldn't have caused the errors with booting.

It sounds to me like your first attempt to clone the disk initialized the new disk at GPT.  Your subsequent attempts failed because the disks was then a GPT disk and the source image was MBR.  Your use of diskpart to Clean the disk and format as NTFS corrected the GPT issue changing format back to MBR which was the correct System Configuration for the source image.

Main thing is it worked (works) now and you know what it takes to do again (if you have/had) to.  I know there are mixed recommendations on when to restore the disk signature and/or MBR track 0.  Personally, When I take a full disk image and plan to restore that image back to the same motherboard with same bios settings, I always just restore EVERYTHING and that generally works for me.  If that does not result in a bootable system (which is rare for me), then I try restoring everything except the MBR Track 0.  

Acronis should format the drive to whatever partition scheme you've booted into the recovery media with (legacy = mbr / uefi = gpt).  However, it never hurts to be prudent and diskpart the new disk and initialize as the correct type ahead of time).  Windows installers require this as well... although Acronis is capable of handling this with the restore, it certainly won't hurt.