Windows 10: Are my system boot files on the wrong drive? Screen Shots Included

I had lots of trouble with this latest clean install of Windows 10 to my new SSD drive. Most of the issues had to do with Windows not being able to find a partition to install on and then the partition was in the wrong format and had to be converted to gpt using the diskpart command. After pulling half my hair out I finally got it installed and it seems to be working fine. But I think I might have screwed up by not disconnecting the original OS hard drive before the install.

When I went back into Bios to make my new C: drive the first boot priority I noticed that it does not show up in the Bios! It shows up in the Microsoft Disk Management utility, in the attached image, as Disk 0. But notice that there is no System Reserve partition.





Then I checked it with the Diskpart command and found a hidden partition on the drive, shown in the next two screenshots.








At first I thought that the hidden partition 1 was the System Reserve partition, however, after doing some additional research I read that it should be 100mb, not 16mb and that the hidden 16mb partition is normal and should be there in addition to the System Reserve partition.

I'm concerned that, since I did not disconnect the original OS hard drive prior to installation, the Windows installer saw that the necessary boot files were already on my old drive and did not partition the new SSD drive correctly and install the necessary boot files on it. I guess it would work ok as it is, however, I was planning on formatting the old hard drive and using it for data storage. If my concern is correct and I do that I suppose Windows will no longer boot!

My plan is to test it by disconnecting the old OS drive and seeing if Windows will boot. My questions are as follows:

1. Am I on the right track?
2. If it doesn't boot, with the now D: drive disconnected, can I just use the program EasyBCD, that I've read about on this forum, to copy my boot files to the C; drive?
3. Would not having the boot files on the C: drive cause it to not show up in my Bios?

I need the advice of the experts on this one. I'm hoping to not have to do another clean install, the last one nearly killed me! Your advice will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!

:)

 

Windows 10 displays wrong boot system in msconfig! Problem?

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System wont boot up, asking for Recovery Key.

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Yes, your boot files are on the HDD, drive 1 and not on your SSD, drive 0. Disconnect your HDD and your computer won't boot.

Having the boot files on the HDD will cause your SSD to not show up in UEFI as a boot source.

I would recommend you use MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink the OS on the SSD by enough space to allow it to copy the EFI system partition from drive 1 to drive 0.

Free download Magic Partition Manager Software, partition magic alternative, free partition magic, partition magic Windows 7 and server partition software - Partition Wizard Online

Then disconnect the HDD and see if the computer boots from the SSD only. If it does, then you can use MiniTool PW to delete the boot partition from the HDD.

 

Thank you so much for your reply and confirmation of my suspicions. Your advice is always very welcome. I am gaining quite an education on Windows operating systems and their installation on this upgrade. And here I thought that the only reason to disconnect the old hard drive during the install, as you had recommended in your response to me in another post, was to protect from data loss. The shame of it is I did disconnect it during the first install and the install went beautifully but that install would not activate. A call to Microsoft revealed that I had downloaded and installed a different version of Windows 10 than my original free upgrade. Windows 10 Home 64 bit single language version instead of multi language version and according to Microsoft they could not just give me a product key to activate my installation, I would have to reinstall the correct version. Yes quite an education.

I will post back after giving your suggestions a try and hopefully be able to mark this one as solved!

 

You may want to do something else. The boot files for Win 8 are also in the EFI system partition.

If you are thinking about removing or wiping the HDD then you will need a Recovery partition to hold the Recovery tools.

Copying over the EFI partition may not allow you to boot without resetting the boot files to the new configuration.

I would reinstall without the HDD present so you have a good and more stable install. Put the HDD some place safe if you need to pull files from it later.

 

You are correct that the EFI partition contains the boot drive for 8.1. Simply moving it to the other drive just "reverses" the current situtation.

You can of course put a new efi partition on the drive with windows 10 without needing to reinstall OS.

OP could do this.

1) Install Macrium Reflect Free, then create a Macrium Rescue Drive.

2) boot to Windows 8, as this will be a dual boot setup.

3) run msconfig to remove Windows 10 boot entry from the boot tab

4) Remove all drives except that with Windows 10 on it

5) Boot from Macrium Reflect Free, select restore tab and click 'fix windows boot problems'
It will detect windows 10, then click next, finish and efi partition will be rebuilt.

6) set pc to boot from windows 10 drive in bios

7) reconnect other drives

The windows 8 drive can be put away or left in place, using bios to select that drive to boot from if later needed.

 

I'm not sure if Macrium Reflect will do that in this case because there is no EFI partition on Drive 0 to rebuild, nor is there currently any free space on it to build a new one. To get the EFI partition on Drive 0 the Windows 10 partition needs to be shrunk to make room for the EFI partition and I don't think the Macrium Reflect utility has that capability built into it.

Also, Windows 10 will boot and run just fine without a WindowsRE (Recovery) partition.

 

Just out of curiosity, since my D: drive contains three recovery partitions, I ran the command "reagent /info" because I read that it would show me which partition contains the Windows RE (recovery environment). Am I correct that this screenshot shows it to be on the C: drive with the Windows program files?





I would rather have a recovery USB than a recovery partition on my hard drive. Is its location going to complicate making a recovery USB drive.

 

Yeah - that is possibly true. I am certain it will rebuild it if it has space.

However, I don't think it matters if EFI partition is after the C drive, so shrinking the C drive is easy in this case.

However, it is getting messy now, so as it is probably easier to just reinstall from scratch, and get the "optimum" EUFI setup.

If the c drive had a lot of stuff, I would backup the C drive partition only using MRF, clean install Windows 10, then overwrite C drive with image backup. However, that does not apply here.

 

If you create a recovery usb using control panel, recovery, create recovery drive, and select to copy system files, you can delete the recovery partitions really. Deleting them does not affect running of Windows 10, except if you want to reset your pc, keeping files at some point.

TBH: I prefer to create image backups, or backup data and do a repair upgrade which fixes most issues and keeps programs as well as files. as better alternatives to "reset my PC" keeping files (which does not keep desktop programs).

 

After using the Mini Tool Partition Wizard this is what I have now.








Computer boots fine with the D: drive disconnected, but now will not shut down. When I select "Shut Down" from the Windows start menu the screen goes blue and say "Shutting Down" with the spinning circle, but then the desktop pops back up. When I use the "Shift/Restart" key sequence, from within the Windows start menu, one of the two options that pops up is "Shut Down PC", selecting this option shuts the PC down normally. When I hook up the D: drive the computer will also boot up and shut down normally.

Any ideas?

 

An additional screenshot

 

At this point, I don't think the problem is with the boot files. My guess is the problem is either with a pagefile or a hibernation file being directed to the hard drive instead of the SSD.

I would look at steps 11, 15 and 16 here:
Optimize Performance of Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

You want to try disabling hibernation. Enable write caching for the HDD. Step 16 doesn't give you any methods, but you want the only pagefile to be active on the SSD, no pagefile on the HDD. I'm not at my home computer, so can't post screenshots of how to do that. Google would probably help more. You basically want a Windows managed pagefile on the SSD (C:\ drive) only and nowhere else.

 

I looked up how to find your page file setting and determine that the only page file is already on the C: SSD drive and it is system managed. Under advanced power options hibernation is already turned off, but fast start up is enabled. Do you think that could be the problem? I have read that fast start shouldn't be used with an SSD and even found one post that said turning it off cured the symptoms I an experiencing.

I guess the only way to know is to open up my laptop again, remove the HDD, verify the shut down problem still exists, turn off fast startup and then try shutting down again. I will also make sure write caching is enabled. Just to be clear, on the write caching, enable it on the conventional hard drive (D) not the SSD (C) or do I want it enabled on both?