Windows 10: No boot partition on boot drive after clean install with 2nd drive

Hey all,

It's an age old story, probably..

I was running Win7. Had a crash that munged me being able to boot and I have never had success creating a repair disk for 7 with USB3 drivers (I'm on Z170 chipset). So I decided I should finally jump into Win10 as I reserved my digital entitlement during the free period.

So I did a fresh install on a freshly cleared SSD, but stupidly did not remove my Win 7 SSD before doing so. Now Windows 10 is using the boot partition on that drive and did not create one on it's own volume. I get the "Select OS" screen, although booting into 7 does not work.

What's the best practice here for creating what Win10 needs on the boot volume so I can wipe the other SSD? (Or if someone knows how I can get the boot volume on the Win10 drive and fix my Win7, that would be the perfect world)

Diskpart info:

SSD with Win 10 -

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Reserved 16 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 931 GB 17 MB

SSD with Win 7 -

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Reserved 128 MB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 465 GB 229 MB

Other info: I have a bootable Win 10 USB install disk. I also have a bootable Macrium Reflect Free USB stick. I believe I also have an Acronis Recovery USB stick.

I have a spare HDD for cloning my Win 10 install if needed. I'd like to avoid just starting over as I only discovered my error after I fully configured Windows and installed all my apps and migrated data.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

-D

:)

 

System Reserved Partition on Disk 1 not Disk 0

My PC was dual-boot with the 500 MB System Reserved and Primary System partitions on Drive 0 and the Secondary (2nd on added) on Drive 1. Then I started having boot problems which apparently were caused by Disk 0 errors. I would often get "Scanning and repairing
drive" notification during bootup. Then Windows went through some extensive repairs during one boot attempt and added a 500 MB Recovery partition in an unallocated area of Drive 1 after the System partition. I think it was called Recovery. Eventually the computer
wouldn't boot at all.

Now I've replaced the Drive 0 HDD with a 500 GB SSD drive and completed a clean install of Windows 10 on a New 200 (195.31) GB partition on Drive 0 with the intention of the System Reserved partition being added by the Windows installer before the System
partition on Drive 0. That's not what happened, the 500 MB Recovery partition on Drive 1 was replaced with the System Reserved partition. So, I repeated the Windows 10 clean install on SSD Drive 0 and deleted all partitions on Drives 0 & 1 before adding a
New 200 (195.31) GB partition on Drive 0 and selecting Drive 0 for the Windows 10 install. Windows again placed the System reserved partition on Drive 1.

Why is Windows insisting on installing the System Reserved partition on Drive 1?

What do I need to do to get Windows to place the System Reserved partition ahead of the System partition on Drive 0 leaving Drive 1 completely unallocated?

Thanks.

Bill

 

Clean Installing Windows 10 on a Laptop with more than 1 HDD installed

I updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and everything was working fine until I got a BSOD that there was no recovering from (even the repair came up with problems).

I decided to do a clean install of Windows 10 from scratch. I used the Microsoft tool to download and create the Windows 10 Pro 64bit install USB and then proceeded to try and do a clean install. I had removed all partitions from the main disk (256GB Samsung
840 Pro SSD), the partition on my 2nd drive (300gb standard HDD) was left as it is as that holds all my files and data.

When I ran the install it created 1 partition on my main hard drive but didn't create a system reserve boot partition. After the install had run and the laptop rebooted, I just had a back screen with a flashing _

After testing the install on a couple of laptops I'd realised that the install wasn't auto creating a system reserve boot partition because there was a 2nd hdd in the laptop. I removed the 2nd HDD and cleaned the main drive and did the windows 10 install
again and this time it gave me the notice and created the reserve boot partition. After the install I then put my 2nd hdd back into the laptop and it works fine.

Not sure if anyone else has run into this issue when doing a clean install of windows 10 Pro on a machine with more than 1 hdd installed?

If this is a bug in the Windows 10 install, I can see a few people falling foul of it as it's not uncommon to find a PC or laptop with more than 1 hdd installed

 

Hi, I'm a bit puzzled about what you've actually got. On the one hand you have Win 7, so I'd expect legacy BIOS, on the other, you have a 100Mb partition on the Win 7 disk and a 16Mb partition which would be typical of a UEFI boot configuration. There's no Recovery partition- that would be 450Mb for UEFI, 500Mb for legacy.

It would be clearer if you could provide a screenshot using e.g. Minitool Partition Wizard.
Here's a UEFI configuration (legacy is 2 or perhaps 3 partitions).




Nonetheless, I will post again a procedure which should allow you to recover your Win 10 configuration.
1. Use disk imaging (Macrium Reflect (free) or similar) of your Win 10 'C:' only.
2. Wipe the disk on which Win 10 is.
3. Remove the Win 7 disk (and disconnect any others to be 100% safe if you wish)
4. Reinstall Win 10
5. Make sure it boots.
6. Replace the new 'C:' partition by restoring the image you created.
7. Boot from a Win 10 install disk and run Startup Repair

 

Attached is the current partition scheme.

Attachment 146103

So it sounds like you're saying:

Clone the current 10 install so I have a backup.
Disconnect everything except the drive I want 10 on
Install 10 fresh and boot in
Clone my backup back on to the disk effectively wiping the fresh install
Run startup repair

Yes, I know I'm basically repeating what you said in my own words.. but I wanna make sure I got it don't muck it up.



Thanks!

 

The attachment is invalid. If you do a clean install then restore an iamge your back to square one

 

Sorry about the bad attachment. Trying again.

And again, thanks for the help guys. I will clone my current install overnight.

 

I would try doing an image of the efi parition and boot sector shrink c to the right then clone the image to the free space so you have ufi parition drr if it boot if not then do a repair

 

No, you must be misunderstanding this. I've done this myself in the past, and it's been used by others here.

Let me explain in detail.

1. The fresh Windows 10 install creates all necessary partitions.
2. The disk image is ONLY of the C: partition- not the whole disk.
3. ONLY the new partition for C: is being replaced
4. Assuming that the source partition has not been corrupted, that reconstructs a valid win 10 installation.

This does NOT leave the OP back where he started.

 

-no, more precisely, as I said, you are replacing ONLY the new C: partition by restoring the image you've created of the old C: so as to replace ONLY the new C: partition.

Remember that before trying that you can try this:

1. Restore the partitions
2. Boot your PC from Kyhi's boot disk or Macrium Reflect boot disk.
3. Run Macrium's Fix Boot utility.

It might work...

 

1) install Macrium Reflect Free

3) Shrink C drive by say 200 MB

4) Image backup EFI partition

4) Restore image partition to unallocated space on drive 0.

5) ensure bios is set to boot from drive 1

6) disconnect drive 1 and test pc boots ok now

7) if so delete EFI from drive 1.

 

This worked. I truly appreciate the help.

 

What happened to the System Reserved partition on C, or did you create a partition before installing W7 on that drive, but still, there are no system files on C (Disk 0)

If you unplugged the W10 drive, W7 would not boot on its own.

Post a new shot of Disk Management *Smile

 

After I got 10 fixed, I blew out the disk with 7 on it (after making a backup)