Weird Boot problem Win10

[The_DADDY]

13 hours ago, peak4 said:

I'm no expert on this at all; you checked the bios for the boot order and have C as the top level.
Is the HDD still showing in the boot order, but at a lower level?
Just wondering, when you boot the PC, is it looking for C, failing to se it as a bootable drive, dropping down the list to the HDD, and booting to that.
Whilst the operating system isn't on HDD, is the boot file there, which then directs back to C for Windows boot.
Was W10 originally installed from a boot image on the HDD?

 

3 hours ago, geared said:

Check for any bios updates.

 

Also take a couple of pictures of your bios screen showing the boot order

Thanks for the replies. 

 

Some progress bit firstly to answer the questions. 

100% certain the right drive is top.of boot order.

To double check I removed my Blueray drive, SSD and Mechanical drives leaving only the NVME and it would not boot.

Plugged in the Mechanical drive (F) and it booted. Weird...

So I tried cloning the F Drive to the new SSD and it worked, kind of.

The Mechanical drive was 1TB, the new SSD is 2TB and when cloned it only gave me 1TB of usable space so went to disk management and made the second partition active so my new SSD is now split into 2.

Bummer...

But usable. When I deleted everything (files, games, vids),off the first partition of the new SSD I noticed a block of the harddrive still has data on it.

I can't see what it is, I can't access it but it's there.  

Once I'd done all this I again removed the new SSD leaving just the NVME C Drive in and it wouldn't boot.

So, in summary I think some of the operating system is on the F Drive. I've no idea why

I've how idea how.

Has anyone an idea how this could possibly have happened?

I'm stumped. 

 

 

[geared]

It might have the recovery partition or some other system files on there like the swap file or something.

Could be abit of a quirk when you installed the OS, maybe the setup didn't fully support the NvME or something so it something on the other disk.

 

In the view settings for windows, do you have 'hide system files' or similar ticked?

[The_DADDY]

2 hours ago, geared said:

It might have the recovery partition or some other system files on there like the swap file or something.

Could be abit of a quirk when you installed the OS, maybe the setup didn't fully support the NvME or something so it something on the other disk.

 

In the view settings for windows, do you have 'hide system files' or similar ticked?

Thank you for that. I'll have look when I get back.

Thanks again 👍

[peak4]

"When I deleted everything (files, games, vids),off the first partition of the new SSD I noticed a block of the harddrive still has data on it.

I can't see what it is, I can't access it but it's there.  "

I'm guessing it's what I alluded to earlier.
It's possibly a hidden partition, without any allocated letter, and which  you can't easily access, which contains the machine's vital boot files.
Without trying to talk down to anyone here, a basic explanation might be;

Black box of electronics doesn't really know what it is, but has a bit of code resident on the motherboard (i.e. the BIOS), which tells the electronics where to look to identify/define itself.
The black box needs a few boot files in order to find a suitable operating system to define itself as a Windows 10 computer; until this point, it could be anything, such as a Linux server, as the electronics are the same.
The boot order tells it where to look for those files.
It starts at the top of the list, and then works down until it finds some relevant boot files.
In this case, it looks like those files aren't on C, at the top of the list, but are in a hidden partition on on a different drive.
Once the bios finds those files, it is then pointed to where the operating system files reside, in this case on C.

e.g. one of my machines is a dual boot W7-Linux machine; I've not used it for ages.
On booting, it asks which operating system to use; I then pick, and the motherboard bios is directed to the required set of files, W7 or Linux-Mint.
In my case, both of those sets of boot files, and both operating systems, reside on the C drive, but that isn't a requirement, so long as the bios is told where to look.

 

Don't do the following without seeking further advice from someone with more experience than me;
One possibility might be to download the latest Windows 10 image iso file and make a bootable USB from it; you used to be able to do that direct from Microsoft's site.
Remove all drives apart from C,
Boot to USB,
Various options should be available;
A "repair install" should find your original installation on C and offer to create a new boot file on C, without losing your installation and programs.
For obvious reasons make sure all your data is backed up, and pich the correct option carefully.

You may later need to re-allocate drive letters as you re-install the remaining drives.
 

[zach]

I haven't read back so apologies if it's already been mentioned.

 

If you only run Windows 10 from one drive, just remove all the other drives from the boot list (disable them). It doesn't stop them working, just stops them being a boot option.

 

Another odd one I've seen is to turn 'Hot swap' off. This was a good few years ago so probably not needed now. No harm in turning it off if you don't hot swap drives.

 

Do the hard drives connect directly to the motherboard or to a SATA or RAID card?

 

And the possible bad news. I've seen Windows (from W7) stick a partition on a totally different drive. It happened quite a lot when people did clean installs with multiple drives connected. If it's dumped a partition on the mechanical, it could get a bit tricky. Not impossible to recover, but could take a while. If it was me, I'd put the mechanical in, backup everything I wanted, then do a clean install with 'ONLY' the OS drive plugged in. Once installed and updated etc, turn off and plug in the rest of the drives. Change the drive letters to what you're used to.

[Ghozer]

If you stick the drive back in where it was, then boot up - go to Disk Management and look, you will likely see that the Spinny HDD is set as "EFI / System" or "Boot" partition... This is why it wont boot without this drive..

There are various tools to copy/move this partition (and the boot flag) to the correct drive - the alternative is unplug all drives EXCEPT your Windows drive (or just disable them in BIOS) - then reinstall Windows, (you will likely have to flatten the whole drive though, as it will need to create this partition etc, so back up first)

[swarfendor437]

And the other Windows Classic - the system was installed with known hardware - change the hardware and it loses it's rag - thinks you have change the machine the OS was installed on. At least you don't have that issue with GNU/Linux!

Edited September 12 by swarfendor437
typo

[zach]

7 minutes ago, swarfendor437 said:

And the other Windows Classic - the system was installed with known hardware - change the hardware and it loses it's rag - thinks you have change the machine the OS was installed on. At least you don't have that issue with GNU/Linux!

 

It's quite easy really.

 

An OEM license is for one PC only. Change a major component like the motherboard, another OEM license will be needed.

 

A Retail license does not do this. Change major components and just activate again if required.

 

Neither "loses its rag", it's a simple case of people not understanding the license types in most cases. Linux comes with it's own set of issues with major component changes. Going by some of your posts over the years, I thought you'd know that!

[swarfendor437]

Well  not had any issues with PCLinuxOS - apart from the fact I had to downgrade to a GT440 that I purchased off e-bay. Apparently PCLinuxOS doesn't like GT1030's but then again, we know what Linus thinks of nvidia!

 

https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-****-you-nvidia

 

GNU/Linux is about freedom to do with your computer what you want to do with it. The GNU/Linux you install is yours, not licensed, and can be installed on as many computers as you like.

During Lockdown until I retired, the only thing I needed Windows for (as a VM inside of Devuan 3.0 running virt-manager) was to access a shared mailbox that I could not get settings for from IT. I did however manage to work out how to get Evolution synced with my works Outlook365 mail account myself. The IT guys hadn't made a good job of hiding the settings, covered by a white window, left-clicking it allowed me to remove the whiteout to view the settings but I could have checked it out online anyways! Also, to access the private website to access the shared drive on the server took me 3 logins to access via Edge on the VM. Juse one login with Remmina Remote in GNU/Linux. Oh, and the only other thing I needed Windows for was because I changed from FerenOS to Devuan was that the free Braille Translation program had changed it's GNU/Linux packaging (one library) that would not allow it to run in Devuan, so had to use the Windows Version. I also got work to adopt Jitsi Meet for group meetings as Teams just sucked and hang. I only use Windows 7 Pro 65-bit to update my website, which isn't often. (This post written on my Q40S Plasma Desktop).

 

[Longcol]

The moral of the story is "Don't wear weird boots when starting Win10".

 

Comfy slippers are far more appropriate.