Windows Mail won't open after cloning disk

My wife's hdd on her laptop was getting full so I cloned a larger hdd using Acronis and replaced her old one. Vista booted with no problem all the apps work except for Windows Mail. The storage folders are not in the default area they are in her D:\Documents\My Mail folder.
This is what happens:
1st/ 'Recovering the Windows Mail Database'
While it is doing that it deletes the following files from her message store: edb.chk, edb.log, WindowsMail.MSMessagestore and WindowsMail.pat.

2nd/ 'Windows Mail could not be started. The application was unable to open the Windows Mail message store. Windows Mail was unable to locate its message database. If you've moved the database files to a new location, click OK to reset the database path to that location. Otherwise, click Cancel to proceed, any existing messages found will be available under Orphaned Accounts. (0x00000000).

I then click OK to select the folder where the Windows Mail database is located (D:\Documents\ My Mail)

3rd/ A new window appears with the message 'Windows Mail could not be started. The application was unable to open the Windows Mail message store. Your computer may be out of memory or your disk is full. (0x80070002,2)

4th/ Last window, Windows Mail could not be started because MSOE.dll could not be initialized.

I have tried everything that I could find on the web. I have a backup so I can keep overwriting and trying different things.

First I tried the WMutil.exe from OEHelp.com...didn't help.

I tried resetting Windows Mail by deleting the contents of C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail and removed the entire registry entry of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail. I then tried to rebuild it in the default location ...didn't help same error message
I uninstalled Microsoft Security Essentials. ...didn't help just changed the error code to (0x80004005)
I ran sfc/ scannow, still not working.
My guess is that since the HDD is a major component and it was changed that somehow the OS hasn't registered the license to it or something to that effect.
I can replace the original HDD in the system and it works fine. I repeated the cloning and I still get the same problem.
Does anyone have any idea how to solve this?

It will work if emails are restored in proper location. The location of Windows Mail folders is : /Users/Username/AppData/Local Microsoft/Windows Mail/ and Contacts are stored at : /Users/Username/Contacts. Second thing if you have backup you can copy paste the file here. Basically a image file has all data inside it. It copies everything. All you need is to reconfigure Windows Mail and manually put your mail data in default folders.

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Originally Posted by Deverell

It will work if emails are restored in proper location. The location of Windows Mail folders is : /Users/Username/AppData/Local Microsoft/Windows Mail/ and Contacts are stored at : /Users/Username/Contacts. Second thing if you have backup you can copy paste the file here. Basically a image file has all data inside it. It copies everything. All you need is to reconfigure Windows Mail and manually put your mail data in default folders.

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I already tried that. I still get the same error. It won't rebuild the database on this new drive for whatever reason.
I have tried something else since but I'm still not happy with the result.
Remember that my message store is on partition D: of my original drive and Windows Mail works fine.
Instead of cloning the whole original drive I decided to just use the new drive as a storage drive D:
I reconfigured the drive, copied the contents of the original D: partition on to it. Renamed the original D: to H: Then made the new drive letter D:
Windows Mail shouldn't notice any difference right? Because the path is still the same. All I did was put the whole partion D: on a new drive.
Well I get the same error again. Now I'm worried that I lost the mail for good.
I tried to rebuild the mail on the default location of the original drive and it was successful. I was able to import everything that was on D: and everything works fine.
But here's the catch. I don't want the mail storage on my boot drive, I want it on my storage drive.
If I change the storage location in Windows Mail to this new drive then restart Windows Mail, I get the same error again!
I should be able to put it anywhere I want but for whatever reason it doesn't like this new drive!

It could be that your email account has been corrupted. So try to delete your current email account. (Click on Tools, Accounts in Windows Mail) but before that be sure to backup (Export) any email messages you want to keep. Close and reopen Windows Mail. Add the email account again. (Click Tools, Accounts, Add, E-mail) and check if that works or not.

I rebuilt the mail in the default location ie: users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail
Everything works fine, send - receive messages, delete, move, whatever.
I can export, import any and everything BUT when I attempt to relocate my storage folder to this new drive then restart Windows Mail, I get the dreaded "Windows Mail could not be started. The application was unable to open the Windows Mail message store. Windows Mail was unable to locate its message database. If you've moved the database files to a new location, click OK to reset the database path to that location. Otherwise, click Cancel to proceed, any existing messages found will be available under Orphaned Accounts. (0x00000000)."
Then I have to rebuild Windows Mail all over again! Weird. It's got to have something to do with hardware ID's not registered with Windows Genuine nonsense or something along those lines.
A few years ago I upgraded a processor in a Windows system and I had all kinds of problems. I eventually had to reinstall the OS. A real pain in the ass!

Do you have a system restore point you can recover to? It sounds to me like you were having much like a virus or an aborted update? I would have to agree here that in the long run - get yourself an internet email account (googlemail, yahoo, hotmail etc) and use that - travels the world and ISP's. Also try ownloading and installing the Microsoft Installer Cleanup utility from here and run this and any reference to Windows Live or MSN remove the botched installs and try to reinstall.