Windows 10: Think I finally have my boot drive squared away

Went through this again:

1. Used Macrium to create a backup image of my Win 10 Pro X64 C: partition.
2. Clean installed Win 10 Pro X64 build 10586 ver 1511.
3. Restored backup image of my Win 10 Pro X64 C: partition.
4. Used Macrium's Restore task: Fix Windows boot problems to make sure Win 10 was bootable.
5. Rebooted and all is well. Everything works as before.

Checked my 250GB Sandisk EVO SSD structure with EaseUS Partition Master Free and now it looks right.





Complete process took about an hour.

:)

 

Gray Square on Desktop - Frozen Cursor

Nick,

I am not that tech savvy so if I do a clean boot, what am I looking for once I do the clean boot? It is all well and good to say that I'll do a 'clean boot' but then what?

also, I should have been more clear when I posted my original inquiry. What I have on my desktop is a 'clear' square on the far right hand side of the screen. There is a flickering mouse pointer inside the box (sometimes). if I use my touchpad or my mouse,
a 2nd pointer is displayed on the screen but it does not allow me to click a link - until I take my finger, put it into the clear square, hold it and slowly swipe it away - in any direction. Sometimes when i swipe the square a gray circle takes its place
and I just use my finger to swipe that away as well. I have also had the experience of gray circles reappearing as soon as I swipe the first gray circle away and it repeats to the point where i have to restart my laptop. After restart, the square and the
circles do not appear.

See a pic of my desktop attached to this note.

 

Is there a way to do this and keep all of my files?

Ok what happened is my laptop all of the sudden started only booting to the BIOS and i tried everything to fix this and finally i made a usb drive with a copy of windows 10 on it and it starts up now but i see this:

my
question is will this delete everything on my hard drive (which i am not booting from) because i have really important stuff on my computer that i can not lose (also if i press yes it just takes me to square one)

 

not right, but it works - reserve partition is on disk 2

 

Every GPT disk must have its own MSR Partition. For Windows, it's 16MB
For GPT data disk, it's 128MB
NOTE: from screen shot, Disk 1 & 2 are my 2 separate Windows 10. Disk 3 is Data storage

 

look at his disk 1 again... Highlight the reserve partition for me..

 

I did not say anything different. His partition scheme of disk 1 is incorrect. His disk 2 is also a GPT disk so the MSR partition is associated with disk 2 which is a basic GPT disk, the MSR partition is 128MB and since you mentioned disk 2 which had nothing to do with disk 1.

 

I've also got that 16 MB partition - is it really necessary though...?

i.e. what possible "possible subsequent use" can 16MB be for? Other than store pointers on a system that supports deduplication or something...(which only Server does)

 

Windows and GPT FAQ - Windows 10 hardware dev

 

OK, so it does hold pointers then, as opposed file pointers as in dedup it holds the partition GUID's...

Would suggest it is required then.

 

Okay, one more time I guess only this time I'll disconnect the two hard drives leaving only the SSD connected and see what happens. If I do finally get everything on the SSD (Disk 1) then I can delete the one on Disk 2, right?

 

Just finished doing this again. Disconnect the two HDDs leaving only the SSD.
Went through the backup C:, clean install, reconnect HDDs then restore C: and Macrium fix windows boot.
Looks correct to me now in EaseUS Partition Master.





Should I (can I) get rid of any of the extra partitions on Disk 2 now?

 

when you restore with macrium, it must be removing the Reserve partition...
Disk 1 still looks the same as in post 1

 

OP:If you clean install 10 on a blank ssd with no other drive attached, then you can restore C drive partition ONLY, it should work fine. No need to fix windows boot problems. Then you can delete partitions on disk 2.

 

All I restored was the C: partition, nothing else. Why would Macrium remove the reserved partition? Any way around this that allows me to back up and restore my C: drive so I don't have to go through a complete setup of all software and tweaks?
I wonder if using a different backup/restore program would work?

I did that.

1. Created a Macrium backup of C:
2. Powered down and disconnected the two hard drives leaving just the SSD.
3. Clean installed Win 10 Pro X64, deleting all partitions on the SSD and starting the install to an unallocated SSD.
4. Restored C: from backup then ran fix windows boot problems in Macrium. If I don't do this, it doesn't boot.
5. Reconnected two hard drives.

Results as shown. I didn't capture an EaseUS screen of the SSD before the restore, should have. If I get ambitious I'll try it again.