Yesterday, I turned off BitLocker on my NVMe SSD C: drive (Windows 11 24H2) to prepare for cloning to a larger drive. I heard that skipping BitLocker would make the cloning process easier, plus Windows Defender flagged a driver as a potential trojan, leading me to choose a restart before starting the cloning. After disabling BitLocker, my PC showed an 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE 0x7B' error during boot, even before changing any hardware. I tried every recovery option available, but nothing worked. I created an image of the drive and tried to boot from a Windows installation USB, but I'm stuck. My data is fine, but I want to reinstall Windows while keeping my personal files and apps intact. However, I can't boot into Windows at all to access my settings or see where my installed programs list is stored. Any advice on how to transfer everything over without losing anything would be greatly appreciated!
1 Answer
You should try leaving your original SSD in, then performing the Windows reinstallation with the 'Keep personal files and apps' option selected. This might actually allow you to restore your previous setup without losing anything. Just make sure that you're not booting from the USB during this process, as it only works when you're running the setup.exe from an active Windows environment.
I get that, but I can't actually boot into my old Windows install to start the setup. I can only access it via a USB. Is there another way to do it?