G73JH - cloned hard drive - Windows Update/Index/etc not working

[Hyoumaru]

Back in July my Asus g73jh laptop (an older model but it's been working great for me) running Win7 started freezing up. Not Bluescreening, outright freezing. I took it to a local place, who originally said the hard drive was failing, but then told me motherboard had to be replaced. Ultimately the existing hard drive was cloned over to a newer, slightly bigger hard drive (I recognize cloning a failing hard drive has issues, but there's more to this) and the motherboard was replaced. It seemed to work out.

When I got it back however, I discovered something distressing. Windows Update, the index and troubleshooters no longer work, and I'm now unable to install certain new programs or drivers. Some programs even required me to reenter the product keys. I've been looking up and down the internet attempting to find a solution to these issues, and absolutely nothing I've tried has worked.

It got to the point it felt I should start over, then I discovered that the g73jh has a hidden partition used to reset it to a factory installation, which seems to have survived the cloning. After backing everything up, I went through with the factory installation setup via the f9 key, but when it finished, I discovered every problem I described above, is STILL THERE.

At this point I have absolutely no idea what might be causing this problem, or why it persists even when restoring the laptop to its factory installed state. Could the original hard drive have damaged both the existing and hidden partitions due to age? I have noticed that Windows Update and Index no longer working IS actually a recurring problem involved with cloning hard drives, but I've yet to find a working solution to this.

Any help would be very much appreciated here, this has been going on for way too long.

[Clintlgm]

Why not do an inplace upgrade, download the Install media from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7,
I would run so diagnosis on that new hard drive to insure its not defective, just because its new doesn't mean it not failing.
I would run antivirus/malware programs extensively on all your drives? this could be viral cloning would have cloned the virus too. Reguardless Using diskpart to clean all and convert to MBR or GPT which ever portocal your using will only kill any viral/malware on that hard drive, any other drives I the notebook or external could still carry the virus or malware so deal with it. If your new hard drive check out using the diagnosis tool from the manufacture. Clean all Convert and clean install. that should solve your issues. unless it hardware issue, Sounds like this notebook has passed it lifetime usefulness. I find 3 to 5 years on a gaming notebook to be lifetime. So do indeed last longer than that. My G75 carries on still at 5 + Years.

[xeromist]

It might be that Windows is no longer activated. When you change a motherboard that can happen. Double check your system properties.

[Hyoumaru]

okay for unrelated reasons to this, I currently don't have access to the computer and hard drive in question.

I did however have the original hard drive (that was supposidly failing) checked and booted on a different computer of the same model, Windows update and all the issues I've listed as not working on the cloned hard drive still work on it.

So could this mean it was just a bad cloning? I didn't handle the cloning myself since I had no idea how to or if I had the right equipment to do it.

[Clintlgm]

I would find that likely, get your self a free Macrium Reflect, install it, create a revovery media, then create an Image of your entire SSD/Hardrive. Boot to your recovery USB thumbdrive it MR boots up and you can see the image you created. Just continue on from there and clone your old to new when complete shut down the notebook. remove the old drive put the new driver where the old one was. and boot up all should work perfectly. Look on google for videos on how to do this with MR there a plenty to chose from.

[Hyoumaru]

Clintlgm wrote:
I would find that likely, get your self a free Macrium Reflect, install it, create a revovery media, then create an Image of your entire SSD/Hardrive. Boot to your recovery USB thumbdrive it MR boots up and you can see the image you created. Just continue on from there and clone your old to new when complete shut down the notebook. remove the old drive put the new driver where the old one was. and boot up all should work perfectly. Look on google for videos on how to do this with MR there a plenty to chose from.

I got the laptop back and am ready to attempt a cloning myself, but I have a question first.

I was told that there might in fact be an issue with the Asus G73JH laptop having issues with newer "Advanced Format" Hard drives, which are the standard laptop HDs I'm seeing in stores now. For all I know, this is the reason for the issue with the first cloning attempt having failed.

512 and 4k incompatability are the keywords that keep coming up, but I can't confirm if it's the issue at fault here.

Can anybody confirm wether or not this might be an issue if I attempt a cloning job myself?

[Clintlgm]

I'm not really fimular with the J73, I assume the were SATA 1 or SATA 11, if you drop in a SATA 111 hard drive is should work fine just at the speed of your SATA controller not the speed the hard drive is capable of.
If you do a true CLONE you should have no issue as you new Hard Drive will think It is your old hard dive, Windows will still be activated I don't see any issues.
You should run the clone operation with your new Hard drive still in the RAW condition is comes from the factory. It knows nothing until you clone you old drive then it believes it is your old hard drive that is why its call CLONE,

[Hyoumaru]

Okay so been a while, had some dead ends

Tried cloning software in conjunction with USB enclosures, kept failing no matter which software I tried. I ended up buying a Wavlink HD Dock used for copying and cloning on sale at Newegg for an offline cloning job, and bought a hard drive of the EXACT same model just in case of compatability issues.

Tried to clone it, it made a functioning clone of the original hard drive, so, real nice to have that.

Thing is, while nowhere near as bad as the original hard drive, it feels slow compared to the botched clone that was done by somebody else on recent model hard drive. Don't know what might be causing this, I might just buy a new modern hard drive in the future and see if I can clone onto that just to see if it even works without running into the same problems as before.