Converting to SSD

I purchased a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD with the intention of using it to replace the 1TB internal Seagate hard drive that came with my Inspiron 17R 5720 laptop running Win 8. The stumbling block appears to be associated with the UEFI secure boot system. I've tried a number of different approaches.

Acronis True Image. Cloning did not work because when one reboots after capture of the image, the startup screen hangs at the Acronis logo and will not go any further. Attempting the recover from a complete disk image to the SSD with Acronis didn't work either.

I tried creating GPT partitions on the SSD with GParted then recovered the Acronis images one partition at a time. Attempts to boot to the SSD result in a blue screen with the message the PC needs repair because a critical file is missing. I did include the MBR in that process.

The C:/ drive used space is only 64GB. I created a 128GB partition for it. There are a total of 5 partitions. In addition to the C:/ partition, there is the  EFI (500MB), Diagnostics (40MB), PRG Image (13.52GB )and WinTools (500MB). The MBR takes up 128MB. So there is adequate space on the drive for the original drive content.

I'm kinda chasing my tail here and any advice on how to get this done would be appreciated.   Thanks in advance for any replies... Raybro