Windows 10: Multi boot two Windows 10 Home instances on a single PC

Hello, would appreciate any suggestions and inputI removed my local drive that had a licensed windows 10 home installation and plugged in a new, more spacious NVMe SSD drive. Then I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Home onto my new drive, which appears to have a digital licence. I did not enter my original licence key during installationNow I'm planning to reattach my former local drive in order to have a multi booting system with two instances of Windows 10 Home. I want to use one instance just for Unreal Editor and Gaming related stuff and will boot into my old system for mundane tasks

:)

 

Multi boot Windows 10: unable to boot Windows-instance

Hello,

I am facing what might be the first IT-related issue in history that I, despite research and structured work, might not be able to solve. I've put a lot of hours into solving this, and would greatly appreciate help.

Background:
I run three Windows installations. One for general use, one for music production purposes and one for work. Lately, I have mostly been using the work-instance of Windows.


Problem:
I am all of a sudden not able to boot one of the Windows 10-installations in my multi boot-setup. Specifically, once booting, "Preparing Automatic Repair" starts, a CMD-prompt briefly pops up, and the recovery section appears. If I disable the automatic repair (via bcdedit), different errors appears - such as:

• "The operating system couldn't be loaded because a critical driver is missing or contains errors.
  \Windows\System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys"

My setup:
A Lenovo Legion 5 Pro laptop, containing:

• Disk 0 (Internal M.2/SSD)
  • Windows 10 Main (default Windows that came with laptop) - not working all of a sudden
  • Windows 10 Studio (separate Windows-installation) - working
• Disk 1 (External Samsung SSD)
  • Windows 10 Work (Windows To Go, installed via WinToUSB) - working

Tried so far:

• All options available from the recovery section (including all special boot-modes, "Reset this PC" from web/local drive, system restore, Startup Repair. Have also run the same from external Windows 10 USB-installer.
• Created & edited boot entry's (from the working OS - Windows 10 Studio). Tried lots of different boot parameter variations.
  • Using bcdedit
  • Using Easy BCD
  • Using msconfig
• Changed BIOS settings
• Tried booting from three external boot loaders (including GRUB2)
• Connected/disconnected other USB-peripherals and drives which may have been connected last time it worked
• Ran (and corrected) chkdsk on the faulty OS-partitions
• Ran sfx /scannow on the volume
• Converting disk to dynamic disk (did not work)

Own ideas not tried yet:

• Re-creating the EFI-partition(s) containing the boot loader
• Moving the partition to the different drive
• External tool: Macrium Reflect Fixboot

Additional potential relevant info:

• This exact issue has happened before, with another Windows 10-installation on a separate internal SSD.
• When installing the second OS on Drive 0, I received a warning saying that the partitions were not in the recommended order for GPT disks.
• A second EFI-partition was created when installing the second instance of Windows 10. This however, is not used and does not contain any files.
• I sometimes mount the OS-volumes in other OS-instances, in order to access/transfer files.
• The partition can still be mounted and accessed from my working OS's.
• A new volume (name: Studio-Storage) have been created on the drive (disk 0) recently.
• It has been around 10 days since I last booted the OS which is now not working. Unsure of what could have happened in between?

I realize the chances of recovering a bootable version of the OS are low, but really crossing the fingers that there's some ninja superstar out there who can help me understand what is truly causing the issue, how it potentially can be resolved and prevented in the future.

Thank you kindly in advance!

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Windows 10 USB boot

Hi there, am not a windows 10 expert. I have a pc in the bedroom on windows 10, I messed up the bootloader trying to fix the xp on that system.

System wont boot, trying to repair via win 10 usb installer.

Downloaded the media creation tool to install windows 10 installer on usb stick. Not compatible with a host of usb sticks I have. Tried the usb sticks that others use, but I think they use rufus; as the media creation tool by win 10 does not detect the usb stick.

So quick question, the win10 machine i am trying to repair the bootloader is a win7 upgraded to win10.
If i were to use the usb win10 installer to "repair installation" does the version of the iso downloaded via the media creation tool matter?

There is three options:
Windows 10
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 N

Also is there a step by step instead of using rufus as I want to try an alternative method of creating a usb win 10 installer. Preferably with more compatibility.

System is a asus sabertooth 990 (r2?) with AMD phenom X 6.

Also is there any other software I can load onto the usb that can repair the bootloader easily?
That would be the ideal alternative. Thanks