Migration from HDD to Smaller SSD

I am trying to use Hard Disk Manager 15 to move from a 500GB HDD to a 250GB SSD. Win 10 Pro.

The existing 500GB drive only has about 120GB used so I was hoping that one of my unused Samsung EVO850 256GB drives could replace the very slow system drive. On restore, it asks if I wanted to shrink the partitions which of course I selected yes and assumed it would manage the various files that Windows needs changed to reflect the new SSD. When it booted up, it did not get very far - just a blue screen that says:

RECOVERY
Your PC needs to be repaired.....
Error Code: 0xc000000f

There are no actions that can be taken from here. I tried my recovery USB that was made on the same PC to do a repair, but that simply is an endless loop of re-boots. The other options of doing a clean install etc will require me to re-install and configure the PC which is what I am expecting to avoid by using this software.

Is there a special way to to the image if I am expecting to restore to a smaller disk? Maybe I need to do something at the time of restore? Maybe this is totally impossible and I should not bother trying? Hopefully this is possible and not too difficult. The original disk is still functioning just fine so I can try different options without damaging the original disk.

Hope someone has some helpful notes on this.

EDIT UPDATE:
I restored to a larger disk and that was a success. This verifies the image is good.
Next I tried the 'Migrate OS' tool but it would only give me the option of migrating to the USB that I booted from. After fiddling with that, I rebooted and selected the Migrate tool from the basic interface and it seems to work from there. Now, it is migrating the fresh restore to a smaller SSD with the Migrate tool. Hoping that works. Super happy the original system disk is still healthy and working, if this was a restore after a crash, it would be much more stressful.

This is only a test to document a proper recovery plan for my whole network of about 10 PC's.

Excuse me, I'm drunk now, but yesterday I had almost essentially the same case. A neighbor asked me to help relocate 500 HDD TO 250 Samsung SSD. First, it established "Migrate to SSD", there is a rotating circle, we drank two stacks, smoke and I say, switch off, and I'm home all this take away. but at home I hdm15pro. That's what I did. chkdisk / f for all partitions and then copy hhd? apply. But somehow copy only three sections. I hand the rest dokopiroval. I went back to the neighbor, connect the drive - well run.

Migration from HDD to Smaller SSD
The Paragon says to install the Hard Disk Manager 15 on the SSD empty and alocated in the notebook and after do the migration. But I alheady install the Hard Disk Manager 15 on the HDD that is in runnung in the PC. Is right this?

I am migrating to a smaller drive as well, however it is taking a very long time to copy a small amount of data during transfer.