I'm having a tough time getting my refurbished laptop to boot after cloning my old SSD. My previous laptop, an XPS 9370, died, but I managed to salvage its SSD. I tried to clone this SSD onto the new one that came with my refurbished XPS 9380, which has a similar setup. I'd prefer not to swap the SSDs due to a warranty sticker on the new laptop that I'd risk damaging. After cloning the SSD, I'm stuck getting a blue screen with the error code "a required device isn't connected or can't be accessed" (0xc000000e). The laptop works fine with my old SSD in an external enclosure, but I can't bypass the blue screen when I try to boot with the new SSD. I attempted to format it and even tried a clean Windows 11 install via USB, but it just shows a black screen after the Dell logo. The new laptop was running Windows 10, while my old one was on Windows 11. I've fiddled with the UEFI boot settings, including secure boot options and legacy mode. Could I have corrupted the new SSD? Any suggestions to solve this issue would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
Honestly, I’ve never had much luck with cloning drives either. If it were me, I would just start fresh with the OS and then manually transfer the important files. It usually saves a lot of headache and time in the long run!
You might want to consider fixing the boot configuration data (BCD). It seems like that might be causing the boot failure. I found a couple of guides that might help you out: check out this [Super User link](https://superuser.com/questions/1018157/how-can-i-fix-the-error-0xc00000e-a-required-device-isnt-connected-or-cant) for detailed steps. It could help you resolve that 0xc000000e error you’re facing! Good luck!
Thanks for the tip! I tried following that guide, but sadly, I still end up seeing the same blue screen whenever I try to boot without the external SSD.
Yeah, I really wish I’d gone that route from the start! But now I can't even install a fresh OS on the internal SSD, which is super frustrating.