Windows 10 Boot partition not the same as system partition

maddim

New Member
I have had an SSD failing on me so I opted to upgrade to win10 also if I was going to lose my OS (I couldn't clove the drive).
I have made a win10 installation on a different HHD and apparently (I didn't understand it then) the boot manager was still in the old SSD for replacement drive. Fortunately I hadn't format it.
I used the Bcdboot C:\windows /s c: command but nothing changed. It showed that it has written the boot files to c: but when i try to boot from it is shows NTLDR missing.
What should I do now? How can I move the boot manager to the OS drive? Attached the states of partitions under win7 and win10.
 

Attachments

  • win7parttions.jpg
    win7parttions.jpg
    260 KB · Views: 426
  • win10parttions.jpg
    win10parttions.jpg
    172 KB · Views: 420
I have made a win10 installation on a different HHD and apparently (I didn't understand it then) the boot manager was still in the old SSD for replacement drive.

Should I understand that you didn't properly install Windows on the new HDD?
Disconnect all other disk drives and reinstall it.
 
Should I understand that you didn't properly install Windows on the new HDD?
Disconnect all other disk drives and reinstall it.
I did but the previous OS Win7 was on the SSD and so the boot manager located itself there. Now I want to relocate the boot manager to the OS drive of Win10.
I do not want to reinstall from new again the win 10 as I have made all my setting and files and programs and took me almost a month to complete it.
 
You really should have a separate system partition, so you will probably need to use a live linux disc and gparted to create a small 500-800MB partition on the same disk as Windows 10. If your using the MBR you'll create it as a normal primary partition or if you're using GPT then it needs to be a fat32 partition with the GUID c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b for EFI boot partition. Then you would assign it a drive letter temporarily and run

bcdboot C:\Windows /s H: /f EFI where H: is the letter assigned the system partition or
bcdboot C:\Windows /s H: /f BIOS if the disk is MBR
 
Hi

I've always had good luck with EasyBCD, and it's easy (as it says), to use but I haven't done what you are trying to do in a long time so it's not fresh in my mind. But if I remember correctly you only have to select, Change boot drive, Select the drive you want to boot to, and click go ahead or something like that, and it will do it automatically.

Read though this and see if it's what you are looking for.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/basics/changing-the-boot-partition/

Make sure that the drive you want to boot to is ahead in the boot order in the Bios but after whatever removable media you want to be able to boot to i.e. your DVD drive.

It should be something like, 1 DVD drive, 2 Drive C:\, 3 other drives.

I just copied and pasted this in from another post I made below this one, someone else had the same issue a few days ago.

Mike
 
Thank you Mike. I have downloaded the Easybcd and it is like you say, but I was standing there for 1-2 minutes and finally didn't click it. I was not ready again for a non starting OS. The operation yes is simple but the "all automatically" is frightening me...
After all it is windows we are talking.
I have made a clone of the drive in case it doesn't work and test it but it didn't boot.
I know fairly my way with Boot HDD and sequence (my Bios has a boot override also) it might work though if I did it again.
the problem is that the home PC is in my toddler's room and working hours on it are very limited and cannot go as much as I will need. So my wife will end up with no PC for somedays if it will not go as plan and she needs it at the moment daily.
So I will wait probably the weekend to go ahead and give it a try or maybe I will postponed in it again.
The thing is the easybcd have another software easyre that are advertising that is very good to solve start up win problems of all nature. So even if it will not work I could fix it via this method. But it will cost 20$.
Another solution that I am thinking is to make a new HDD with the Win10 install in my computer (from scratch with no other HDD present) and then earse all files from it and copy the ones from my clone HDD. I think it might work but I am worried about hidden files not being copied. What do you think?
 
All I can tell you is that it has always worked for me, but you can always put in a clean hard drive, and install Windows on it with no other drives plugged in and know for sure where the boot sector will be.

That's what I did when I updated from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, I put in a new SSD unplugged the other drives and then installed Windows 10 on it. When I plugged the other drives back in it still booted to the new drive no problems, only then did I remove my Windows 8 installation from the old drive.

Things like this are a good reason to have a system image file, no matter what you screw up you can get everything back the was it was in a reasonable short period of time.

I use a free program called EaseUS Todo backup and recovery, it's free, and it's always worked for me. It has saved my from hours of messing around many times.
 
Back
Top