Windows 10: Windows 10 install, its a long story

Hi there, newby to the forums but I hope y'all can help. Strap on in.
Desktop PC, 2 physical SATA hard drives.

Running Windows XP on physical drive "1"
Installed Windows 7 and subsequently upgraded to Windows 10 on physical drive "2"

After a few weeks of uploading programs, getting everything set up really nice on Windows 10, Drive "2", I figured, OK, go ahead and wipe and format drive "1" to use for media storage, etc. Used ESEAUS Partion Master.

Carefully clicked on Drive "1", and it said, this drive contains system information are you sure you want to proceed (or something along those lines) I figured, yeah sure, it just sees Windows XP there, no worries.

Well, the next morning, to my grim dissapointment, computer says something like install boot disk or select boot device.
I've fiddled with the BIOS boot settings without any luck. Reloaded Windows 7 on Drive 1, and I can still see all my programs/files, etc. on Drive 2

So the good news is I haven't lost any data. But I can't figure out why deleting Windows XP on physical drive 1 would affect a Windows 10 install physical drive 2???

Many thanks in advance for your help!

:)

 

I was wondering were the physical location of the windows 10 store?

Its a long story And I can not do a restore but were are the physical files on the storage?

a

 

Image CRC Factory Reset

its a long story. Essentially it was lost, and found in a place it should not have been found.

 

Welcome to Tenforums!

The boot files for your Windows 7 resides on Drive 1 even though you upgraded it to Windows 10. If you can't boot up the other Windows 10 (on Drive 2), the easiest thing you can do is to clean install Windows 10 on Drive 1. You don't need to worry about product key as your hardware already has digital entitlement and you can skip typing the product key and it will be activated afterwards. Then just move all your files from Drive 2 to Drive 1 where you have the new Windows 10 installed and then wipe out Drive 2 after moving all your data.

 

Thanks, but either I've confused you, or you've confused me; Windows 7/10 was put on one physical drive, separate and apart from Windows XP on another physical drive. When I wiped out the Windows XP physical drive, something happened such that the computer is not recognizing or booting from Windows 10. Logically, this should not happen, unless somehow when upgrading to Windows 7 it drops some little tiny file or something on a different physical drive, which seems kind of odd. The other possibility is that I need to adjust something in my BIOS, but I've played with that a little and not gotten too far. So I've since loaded Windows 7 back onto the wiped drive, and it is running fine. Next step is to physically disconnect this HD and see what happens when I try to boot, and if that doesn't work, I guess I'll just have to go through all the motions of upgrading to 10, and uploading all my software. All I've lost is time, but it's really frustrating because I don't understand the how/why of this. Thaks for taking the time to read through my diatribes!

 

The boot files were on drive 1. When you installed Windows on drive 2, Windows setup detected the boot files on drive 1 and only updated them to point to Windows on drive 2.

When you wiped drive 1, you also wiped the boot files that were pointing to drive 2, and thus are left with no boot files at all.

Your easiest recovery is just to create the boot files on drive 2 and make it the drive Bios boots from.

 

I think I understand the story. You upgraded your 7 to 10 on one drive. Then you wiped out XP on the other which contains your boot files. Now your 10 won't boot because the boot files are gone. Unless you know your way to re-building the boot files, the simplest solution I am suggesting is to do a clean install of Windows 10 on another drive and move your data out of the non-booting drive before you wipe it out.

 

If the OP doesn't know how to set up the boot files on his disk 2, all he has to do is ask and we can show him how. Ah heck.... let's just show him how now.

Boot into your disk 1 that you set up. The Windows on disk 2 should have a drive letter. I'm going to say E:\. Substitute whatever driver letter it is on your computer. Open a Command Prompt Prompt (Admin) by right clicking on the start icon then selecting Command Prompt (Admin).

In the command prompt window, run the following command:

bcdboot E:\Windows /addlast

Change the driver letter in red to whatever drive letter the Windows on drive 2 was assigned. That should set up dual booting between the Windows 10 you put on drive 1 and the Windows on drive 2. Next, install EasyBCD:
Software Library - NeoSmart Technologies

(You don't really have to register, just click the download button!)

Copy the boot files to your drive 2 Windows partition:
Changing the Boot Partition

Now, shutdown your computer. Unplug the drive 1 SATA cable from the mother board. Plug the SATA data cable from your drive 2 into the slot that the drive 1 was plugged into. It should be the lowest numbered SATA port on the motherboard. Leave your old drive 1 disconnected. Reboot the computer. You should boot into the Windows that is on what was Drive 2.

Press the Win + R keys to open the run dialog. Run msconfig. Select the boot tab. Delete all the boot entries listed except for the Current OS entry. Shutdown your computer.

Plug the data cable for what was your original Drive 1 into the next available SATA port on the motherboard. Power on the computer. You should boot into the Windows 10 that you installed on the old Drive 2 (which you made Drive 1 by switching the data cables).

Now you can reformat your old Drive 1 (which is the new drive 2) and use it for data storage.

 

This sounds easy for us. But for someone who didn't even know why it happened, this will be a steep learning curve. But if the OP can handle this, thanks for sharing this to him. Cheers!
@nealzibub , please do let us know if you got it sorted out. The above is the clearest instructions there is. Good luck!

 

Indeed, navallcdr hit the nail right on the head, and bad robot followed it up as well. The fix is definitely at the upper edge of my comfort zone. But I am a glutton for punishment. So lame that a fresh install on a separate physical drive would still rely on boot files from decade old software on another physical drive!!! Thanks guys I'll keep you posted as to my fix.

 

And the other half of the population would complain "It's so lame that Windows 10 setup wouldn't detect my other OS and set up dual booting!" One tip when wanting to do a complete, independent clean install on a system with more then one hard drive/SSD is to just have only the hard drive/SSD that you desire to have the independent Windows installed on connected and pull the plug on all other hard drives/SSDs during the install.

 

Indeed. I'm contemplating just pulling the plug on drive 1 and doing another fresh install of windows 7 on drive 2. I'll have to reload a few programs but it feels a little safer. One 'last' question; is it really necessary to go in and plug and unplug the hard drives as you describe, or can't I just do that through the bios? They're both Sata drives so I don't think there's any master/slave issues.

 

You really have to if you don't wanna go back to this problem again. You wanna make sure that the boot files stick to the right drive. It's easier to pull the plug now than to go back to square one next time.

I just had that same boot issue 15minutes ago when I transferred a data partition to a separate drive. I was so sure there's no boot files on it but things can always go wrong. But it's no biggie for me because I can get out of it in 15 minutes. I just did an image restoration. *chuckle

 

Well, Hell. I gave it the old college try. EasyBCD wouldn't let me copy the boot files to a 'logical' drive, only primary. So I then downloaded Easeus Partition Master (which, ironically, sort of got me into this mess in the first place) to convert the partition from logical to primary, only it said the trial version wont do this and I have to buy a copy.....sooooooooo....unplugging one drive, and reloading Windows 7 on the original drive...bummer dude. thanks again for all your help! it was a fun project while it lasted!

 

MiniTool Partition Wizard free would have converted the logical partition to primary. Also, now that the computer has had one upgrade to Windows 10 on it, you don't have to go back and install Windows 7 on it to upgrade - you can just do a clean install of Windows 10.