Windows 10: Windows 10 won't boot after restoring partition

Around a year ago I wanted to test out Windows 10, so I created a 100GB partition on my 250GB SSD and installed it there and dual booted with my main OS Windows 7. After a few months I was beginning to run out of space and decided to stick with just Windows 7. However, in case I wanted to return to Windows 10 I made a clone of that partition using Clonezilla and threw that image on one of my backup HDDs.

Fast forward a year later, I just got a new 500GB SSD. My idea is to use the 500GB SSD as my Windows 7 OS drive and my 250GB SSD for Windows 10 that I would restore from the image.

I first used Macrium Reflect to clone the entire 250GB disk to the 500GB and then chose the 500GB as my main boot drive in the BIOS. That all went well and I booted right into my new drive. I then formatted the 250GB SSD to get it ready for restoring my Windows 10 image.

I then rebooted into Clonezilla and went through the restoration process of the Win 10 image with no errors. After a reboot into Windows 7 I applied a drive letter to the 250GB and I can see my Windows 10 file structure just fine and dandy.

I then rebooted my PC and hit F8 to get the boot menu and I select the Windows 10 drive and all I get is a blinking cursor.

My first thought is when I saved the Windows 10 partition it didn't save the MBR information which was probably part of my 100MB System Reserve partition from my other drive. So I first disabled my Windows 7 500GB SSD in the BIOS so my Windows 10 installation repair wouldn't be able to see it and mess with anything there. I went to Troubleshoot and and first tried the "Startup Repair" quick option. It went through the process and automatically rebooted, but I still got the blinking cursor. I then tried going to the command prompt in the installation CD and did the whole /fixmbr /fixboot /rebuildbcd dealio. Restarted and still the blinking cursor.

My guess is the information it needs is on that System Partition that no longer exists on that drive? Though I thought that is what the repair stuff would rebuild.

I should mention that what I want is completely separate OS's on each drive WITHOUT a boot manager between them. I still want to use my Windows 7 as my main OS, but if I ever want to boot into Windows 10 for the DX12 games I can do so with F8.

Another idea I had would be to make a fresh install of Windows 10 on that drive. Then delete just the Windows 10 partition, leaving the other partitions (system reserve, etc) intact, and then restore the clonezilla windows 10 image in that fresh allocated space. I'm not sure if that would work?

Any help on why my Windows 10 is not booting and what else I can try would be appreciated.

:)

 

Windows 10 System Won't Boot

I have a dual-boot Windows 10 system. Each Windows 10 system is on a separate drive.

The primary partition (the first one installed and the one on the drive with the system reserved partition) became unstable and and wouldn't boot. I believe that the master boot record was also damaged because booting the secondary partition became unreliable.

However, after several tries the secondary Windows 10 partition booted and went through a system repair and update process that took several hours and rebooted a number of times. Once this process was complete, a recovery partition had been added to the
disk containing the secondary partition and the secondary became the primary partition. Now it's the secondary (used to be the primary) Windows 10 partition that won't boot.

Is there anyway to restore Windows on the currently secondary partition? Before it quit working all together I'd tried creating recovery media on a USB drive but I haven't been able to figure a way to use it. I also haven't been able to find any instructions
on how to use it. Is there some way I might be able to use that to restore the partition? If not, can I create and use install media for the repair?

Finally, how can I go about restoring the the repaired system as the primary system and reactivating the system reserved partition on that disk? Then can I get rid of the Recovery Partition on the other system drive?

Thanks.

Bill

 

Edit partitions while installing Windows 10

Thank you for your answer.

In my previous experience, installing Windows after Ubuntu causes Ubuntu partition to be deleted. Won't this happen with Windows 10 too?

And if yes, what will happen to GRUB after removing the Ubuntu partition? Will I still be able to boot into Windows 8.1?

Thank you for your patience

 

We need to see a screenshot of disk management with all of the columns widened so we can see all the data in them:
Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of General Tips Tutorials

If your computer is UEFI, you are going to need to create a fat32 EFI System partition on the Windows 10 SSD to boot from. Your efforts so far have only created boot files inside the OS partition for legacy BIOS (or CSM mode) booting which a UEFI computer cannot boot from (unless you enable legacy BIOS or CSM mode in firmware settings).

 

If you are able to boot to display disk management then download and install Minitool partition wizard:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Post an image of each into the thread. For disk management make sure that you widen the columns for each volume and status so that the contents in each row are visible and not cut off.

If you are unable to boot you may be able to use boot recovery:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums