Windows won't boot without (supposedly unused) ssd

[sharki]

Hello!

 

A few months back I reinstalled windows. First 7 again, then upgraded to 10.

The installation was done on my new 500gb ssd, while my old 120gb ssd was still in the system. Everything worked fine, when booting I got the windows 10 boot up screen and got to choose between booting to windows 10 on the new ssd or windows 7 on my old ssd.

 

Today I decided it was time for my old drive to leave the system but to my surprise the computer now doesn’t boot anymore. Could it be possible that a boot sector is missing?
When re-inserting my old ssd I get the dual boot option again, but I want to use that drive for another system.

 

In the included image you can see my new ssd as C drive (duh), and old ssd as T.

 

Any ideas why it won't boot without the old ssd?

 

 

[cragger89]

Does it boot with the other drives disconnected?

 

Whatever the issue is, it might be quicker to just do a windows reinstall, assuming all of your data is backed up already (it looks like it is from the screenshot you've provided).

 

 

[Chronical93]

With both disks attached Do this:

Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD

Then mark 100MB partition on old drive inactive to prevent to use it as BOOT partition
Partition - Mark as Inactive

 

[DevilishBooster]

You have experienced one of the joys of Win10. There seems to be this weird bug where, if you have more than one drive plugged in when you install Win10, it will randomly put some of the critical system files (or at least associate them) with the secondary drive, making it necessary for bootup. I experienced this with both the Win10 Insider Beta version, and the clean install I did last fall. The only way to fix it is to only plug in the drive that you want the OS on and do a clean install, then plug in the rest of the drives once the setup is complete. Obviously this includes making sure that you have any personal files backed up. I would also suggest making double sure you have any and all license keys saved on a sheet of paper.

[urexyvca]

Maybe the boot files are in that old SSD. Quick question, do you use EFI? or boot with legacy thingy?

[Crowes]

7 minutes ago, DevilishBooster said:

You have experienced one of the joys of Win10. There seems to be this weird bug where, if you have more than one drive plugged in when you install Win10, it will randomly put some of the critical system files (or at least associate them) with the secondary drive, making it necessary for bootup. I experienced this with both the Win10 Insider Beta version, and the clean install I did last fall. The only way to fix it is to only plug in the drive that you want the OS on and do a clean install, then plug in the rest of the drives once the setup is complete. Obviously this includes making sure that you have any personal files backed up. I would also suggest making double sure you have any and all license keys saved on a sheet of paper.

 

Huh, strange. I recently moved a 120GB SSD from my desktop (it was not a boot drive, and literally had about 500mb used) to my laptop, fresh installed 10, and laptop was fine. Regardless, the desktop I removed it from, which had Windows 10 installed on it with said drive connected along with another HDD on top of that, is still perfectly fine.

[zMeul]

6 minutes ago, DevilishBooster said:

You have experienced one of the joys of Win10. There seems to be this weird bug where, if you have more than one drive plugged in when you install Win10, it will randomly put some of the critical system files (or at least associate them) with the secondary drive, making it necessary for bootup.

this isn't related to W10 at all

any OS install, Win or nix, will search for existing boot record and install the loader on that disk

[SaladFingers]

Definitely sounds like the bootloader is on the unused drive. Copy it over your current SSD if you don't want to go through the trouble of re-installing.

 

Edit: Here's what I use for that stuff: EasyBCD

[urexyvca]

I think that when it installed on the new SSD, it checked if there was already a windows boot files in the system and added it's boot entries in the old SSD's boot files.

 

I recommend removing your drive, booting a windows installation setup and chose Startup repair or something to add boot files.

[SaladFingers]

1 minute ago, Kyuunex said:

I think that when it installed on the new SSD, it checked if there was already a windows boot files in the system and added it's boot entries in the old SSD's boot files.

 

I recommend removing your drive, booting a windows installation setup and chose Startup repair or something to add boot files.

That also works, Windows should do an automatic startup repair even.

[DevilishBooster]

5 minutes ago, zMeul said:

this isn't related to W10 at all

any OS install, Win or nix, will search for existing boot record and install the loader on that disk

When I experienced it I was doing a clean install with all blank discs and, after long discussion with other beta testers, the only conclusion we could come up with was that the installation was associating the secondary drive with key bootloader files when it shouldn't. I have installed many OS's with multi-drive systems, from XP to Win10, and never expereinced this issue until Win10.

[zMeul]

3 minutes ago, DevilishBooster said:

When I experienced it I was doing a clean install with all blank discs and

clean blank disks as in unitialized and unpartitioned?! I find very hard to believe it

 

ever since W2K, the 1st Windows to get a boot manager, the install would put that manager on the disk with a boot sector, if already present

even in pre-NT days, you'd have to manually set the boot partition manually and active when formatting

[DevilishBooster]

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

clean blank disks as in unitialized and unpartitioned?! I find very hard to believe it

 

ever since W2K, the 1st Windows to get a boot manager, the install would put that manager on the disk with a boot sector, if already present

Both times when I expereinced it was with drives that had be formatted 3 times and the partitions deleted, and then the partitions were recreated buy the instalation. Maybe I had fluke experiences, but we couldn't figure out any reason why it would be associating the secondary drive with the bootloader.

[sharki]

Thanks a lot for all the replies! That was a lot more help than I expected.

 

Moving the bootmanager with EasyBDC, as proposed by Chronical93 and a few others did the job. With the old ssd removed my pc now boots!

 

One more question: can you remove an entry from the bootmanager? With the old ssd removed (with the windows 7 install) I sill get the dualboot start screen.

How can I remove that?

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, DevilishBooster said:

Both times when I experienced it was with drives that had be formatted 3 times and the partitions deleted, and then the partitions were recreated buy the installation. Maybe I had fluke experiences, but we couldn't figure out any reason why it would be associating the secondary drive with the bootloader.

could've happened that the BCD partition was already present on another disk - Windows' disk management doesn't show the BCD partition and thus, can't be formatted or removed

not sure that even the install kitt shows the BCD partition

 

one other thing that can happen, seen it couple of years back - the disk was not disk0, the other disk was

when having multiple disks in the system, it's best practice to install the OS disk in SATA port 0

[zMeul]

6 minutes ago, sharki said:

One more question: can you remove an entry from the bootmanager? With the old ssd removed (with the windows 7 install) I sill get the dualboot start screen.

How can I remove that?

should work for W10 too: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2288-windows-boot-manager-delete-listed-operating-system.html

use the BCD tool

[sharki]

Found the way to remove the old windows 7 entry here. (same link as zMeul posted 5 seconds earlyer)

 

Thanks again for all the replies!

[DevilishBooster]

4 minutes ago, zMeul said:

could've happened that the BCD partition was already present on another disk - Windows' disk management doesn't show the BCD partition and thus, can't be formatted or removed

not sure that even the install kitt shows the BCD partition

 

one other thing that can happen, seen it couple of years back - the disk was not disk0, the other disk was

when having multiple disks in the system, it's best practice to install the OS disk in SATA port 0

Yeah, I learned that a while back. I just make it a policy now of only having the one disk in the system so that there can't be a mix up. If I know the system needs more than one drive I'll install the other drives and run the cables, but then when I go to install the OS I just disconnect the SATA/PWR for the extra drives and then plug them back in once install it done. I'm not a computer genius, but I was raised to work smarter before harder, so it just seems like the logical method.