Windows 8 black screen & "no such interface supported" after disk cloning

Question

My HDD was in a bad condition so I've bought a new one and cloned all partitions from the last drive. The problem is, now when I boot Windows 8 (from the new drive ofc), that's how it looks:

1. It doesn't show any picture on the lock screen
2. It doesn't show profile pictures on the logon screen
3. On logon screen, I have my profile visible + Administrator account (which was disabled earlier)
4. If I log in to any of these, I can see only black screen and mouse
5. On these black screens I can ctrl + shft + del, but:
   • clicking on ctrl + shft + del items won't do anything on my regular account
   • on Administrator account, clicking three times on "Task Manager" finally runs it
6. From this Task Manager on Admin account I can run explorer.exe. It shows the desktop and taskbar (with no icons on it).
7. From this Task Manager on Admin account I can also run cmd.exe, but I starts neither in System32 nor in Administrator user folder, it starts in (shows path of) F:\Users\TEMP>
8. As can be seen in 7. -> drive letter is not C:, but F:
9. When trying to run anything other than explorer.exe or cmd.exe it always shows error "No such interface supported".

Please, help me. New installation on Windows is not an option. Kind regards ~ohcs

Answer 1

Windows maps disk letter to concrete disk and stores this information in registry under HKLM\System\MountedDevices. So if you've earlier connected your new disk as non-system, it already has letter F: assigned.

If it allows you to run Regedit.exe as Administrator, then simply delete value \DosDevices\C: and then rename \DosDevices\F: to it and restart.

You may also do this offline from another system by editing system registry hive from %drive%:\windows\system32\config\SYSTEM, where %drive% is your new disk connected to another computer.

You may also use Windows Recovery media and using regedit.exe thatway.

Alternatively you may use some live linux distro containing reged utility, eg. pogostick.net, System Rescue CD

More about editing registry offline Search here on SuperUser.com