Windows 10: Can I move Windows Boot Manager to another drive without reinstalling windows?

Discus and support Can I move Windows Boot Manager to another drive without reinstalling windows? in Windows 10 Software and Apps to solve the problem; I want to remove that hard drive from pc because it is starting to fail... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Software and Apps' started by Flke Drvin, Apr 17, 2024.

  1. FLKE DRVIN
    Flke Drvin Win User

    Can I move Windows Boot Manager to another drive without reinstalling windows?


    I want to remove that hard drive from pc because it is starting to fail

    :)
     
    Flke Drvin, Apr 17, 2024
    #1
  2. SPEEDY11131
    speedy11131 Win User

    Windows 7 booting off wrong drive?!?!?

    Please move if this is in the wrong place.

    I have two hard drives, a 1.5TB drive, and a 160GB drive. Windows is installed on the 1.5TB drive, as are all my files and programs. The 160GB drive has a bunch of old files, and apparently the bootmgr and boot folder. Nothing else is on the 160GB drive, other than media files etc.

    If I remove the 160GB drive from the machine, windows refuses to boot, plug it back in, it works fine. The setup with two hard drives I have now is temporary, as the 160GB drive will go into another machine.

    My question is, can someone give me a step by step on how to make windows force to boot off the 1.5TB drive, ignoring the 160GB drive in the boot process completely?
    I don't know how to do this in Windows 7, on XP I would just run the /fixmbr command and its related ones.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Note: I would really really rather not have to wipe and reinstall, I know it can be done without one as I've had this issue with XP before.
     
    speedy11131, Apr 17, 2024
    #2
  3. TRWOV
    TRWOV Win User
    Windows 8x reinstall

    Sorry if this has already been suggested. Have you tried using a boot USB drive? You'll need a flash drive bigger than 4GB, the W8.1 ISO and the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool. That would let you bypass the DVD drive.

    I've found a handful of USB drives that won't work as boot drives (the tool says that it couldn't make the drive bootable or that the files couldn't be copied) even if the drive worked fine ass a boot drive with Linux Mint or memtest so YMMV.
     
    TRWOV, Apr 17, 2024
    #3
  4. JPIERCE55
    jpierce55 Win User

    Can I move Windows Boot Manager to another drive without reinstalling windows?

    Reinstall Windows?

    You don't need to reinstall windows. Go to the device manager and remove uninstall the processor and motherboard drivers listed. When you start the system back up you should be able to re-install the new ones. I just changed my mobo/processor Friday, everything is fine.

    BTW I have seen some reviews that state practically no difference in using more than 2gb of ram.
     
    jpierce55, Apr 17, 2024
    #4
Thema:

Can I move Windows Boot Manager to another drive without reinstalling windows?

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