Windows 10: Need help to manage multi UEFI disks installs!!

Hello, i have a laptop which has 2 SSD and both are GPT. I first installed some systems on the 1st one. Now i'm trying to do same on the 2nd, but the old good trick "remove all SSD but the one you install on" cannot work here since i'd have to tear the laptop everytime (it's very hard to open it and since it's aluminium, it bends it..!); so i'm stuck : Windows 10 installer does NOT create a new EFI partition on 2nd SSD and use the one on the 1st SSD. I guess i can manually create/copy the EFI parition, but how? And the, will Windows use it automatically? Hope you can help ^^

:)

 

No "Windows Boot Manager" entry of Boot Configuration of UEFI for Surface Pro 4

The only way I'm aware Windows Boot Manager will not set itself first to boot on a UEFI System is if it was installed in CSM or Legacy Mode. You can tell this in Disk Management by the presence of the legacy Active flag on System partition and lack of an
EFI System partition, or type msinfo in Start search to look in System Information at BIOS mode.

Sometimes the settings in the UEFI firmware are sparse and the only determinative for UEFI install is if the installation media is booted as a UEFI device and all partitions deleted down to Unallocated Space to reset if necessary the disk formatting from
MBR to GPT required for UEFI install.

The normal UEFI settings in BIOS are CSM, Legacy BIOS, UEFI, and under Boot Priority order. If you want to report back those settings choices we can help interpret them.

If the Windows Boot Manager was deleted from the list then you may need to Reset UEFI Firmware to Defaults using that choice wherever it appears - check all tabs.

 

windows 10 professional not finding one of two internal hard drives

Did you try setting the UEFI firmware or BIOS setup to another SATA setting than RAID? RAID can be problematic so I would avoid it.

Then set Windows drive as first to boot if a Legacy BIOS, or Windows Boot Manager (which is invoked when Windows is installed UEFI to GPT disk) if you have the newer UEFI firmware.

If installing on a UEFI system and hard drive has been previously booted as a Legacy MBR drive, then boot the installation media as a UEFI device, during install delete all partitions to Unallocated Space to clear formatting and invoke Windows Boot Manager
as first boot device.

I hope this helps.

 

YOu have to tell the boot loader how to find those different Operating Systems. They expect to be only on one drive, not on multiple hard drives. Why not just use a Virtual Machine, instead of hard loading all of these different OS's? It is going to end up corrupting the main OS and then continue down the line.

 

This is not for testing, i'm using them all. So no virtual machine. So, ok i gotta tell boot loader how to find them. But HOW..?

 

Do you absolutely need to select the drive to boot from using the UEFI boot menu selection? What is the issue that you can't just have the computer always boot from drive 0 and put boot menu entries into the BCD on drive 0 for the OS(s) that is installed on drive 1? Here is my BCD, Windows 7 Home and Pro are installed on a second drive:

Code: Windows Boot Manager -------------------- identifier {bootmgr} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1 path \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI description Windows Boot Manager locale en-us inherit {globalsettings} default {current} resumeobject {2b87e6c5-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} displayorder {current} {22603e1a-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} {1dc1af23-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} toolsdisplayorder {memdiag} timeout 3 Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {current} device partition=C: path \Windows\system32\winload.efi description Windows 10 Pro locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} isolatedcontext Yes allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075 osdevice partition=C: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {2b87e6c5-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} nx OptIn bootmenupolicy Standard Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {22603e1a-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} device partition=G: path \Windows\system32\winload.efi description Windows 7 Home locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice partition=G: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {22603e19-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} nx OptIn detecthal Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {1dc1af23-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} device partition=H: path \Windows\system32\winload.efi description Windows 7 Pro locale en-us inherit {bootloadersettings} osdevice partition=H: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {1dc1af22-d6d3-11e7-8cc4-10c37ba1c52b} nx OptIn detecthal Yes[/quote]



If you absolutely must create an EFI system partition on the second drive, then you would shrink the OS partition by 150 MB, use diskpart to create an EFI system partition on the drive and assign a drive letter to it, then use the bcdboot command to write both the bootloader files and the BCD to it.

 

How do you read the Windows Boot Manager that way? Anyway i'm actually having an issue which is more important right now than having UEFI on the other disk.. I'll make another thread for this.

 

Hi,

Open command prompt (admin) and type in : bcdedit.

Cheers, *Wink

 

On some bioses you can disable the hard drive. Check if your bios has this option. That way you can disable 1 ssd when installing 2nd os.