Windows 10 Changing Default Boot Drive

[EdAWood]

I have an ASUS B85M-E motherboard installed in my system. I just upgraded from Win 7 Ultimate to WX Pro. I have migrated the OS to my 128gb SSD drive labeled Drive S:

How do I make Drive S: the default drive replacing Drive C:? My goal is to have my SSD have only the OS files on board with the other files on my 1tb drive C:

Thanks for your help
Ed Wood

 

[HenkB]

Go to the BIOS settings during power-on and change it in BIOS

 

[EdAWood]

That's just the problem. This MB has the newer UEFI BIOS, not the old legacy BIOS. It is very confusing, and I cannot figure out how to change the boot drive. The UEFI BIOS is not straight forward like the legacy BIOS where you could simply select the drive that you wanted to boot from.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I have already booted to the BIOS to try and change the boot drive there & couldn't figure it out.

Regards,
Ed

 

[Saltgrass]

You may want to provide a picture of your Disk Management window so we can see your configuration.

Have you tried booting without the large drive present? If you were running Windows 7, the install is probably not UEFI, so you would need to select the drive you want to boot to as first priority. If it won't boot, go back to the original one.

 

[HenkB]

I see, sorry.

I used a tool EasyBCD from EasyBCD
It was quit some time ago, it was not too difficult, but I don't remember the details.
Again sorry, for not being very helpful.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I just had to do that, myself.
My old boot drive was on my hard drive and I installed a new SSD and reinstalled my new Windows 10 install on that.

I was prepared to do tricks in the Bios but all I had to do was select the boot menu, tell it to boot to the SSD and it did.

I then opened Easy BCD to remove the old Windows install from the boot sequence.

What I found was that my old install didn't even show up.

After rebooting a couple of times to be sure, I removed the old Windows install and formatted the drive.

Don't remove the old install until you are sure that it boots to the new drive directly, without asking you which one.

Now on a different note, here are the instructions that the tech at Falcon NW gave to my about restarting the compute after installing on the new drive.

1. Disconnect the data cables from the other two drives when installing windows 8 and upgrading to windows 10 (so you are only working with a single drive) {I would also suggest switching the data cables on the back of the old drive and the back of the new one; the old drive is most likely connected to port 0 which is the best place for your operating system drive.}

2. After you are done installing Windows 10, turn the system off and reconnect the other drives. Then reboot but as you are rebooting tap the <Del> key to get into the BIOS.

Once in the BIOS if you go to the BOOT tab and find Hard Drive BBS Priorities, you can select the new SSD as the first boot option and disable all other boot options in this menu. (This makes it so the computer will only boot from this drive automatically, you have to put in a special key combination during the POST process to get it to boot from any other drive.)

As I said I didn't have to do this but you may.

Anyway, if you tell it to boot to the SSD and it does you can check or change the setup using EasyBCD.

Download EasyBCD - MajorGeeks

Remember that what ever drive you boot to will show up as drive C:\, so look at the drive size to make sure which one of the drives you are dealing with in EasyBCD.

Mike

 

[EdAWood]

Have you tried booting without the large drive present? If you were running Windows 7, the install is probably not UEFI, so you would need to select the drive you want to boot to as first priority. If it won't boot, go back to the original one.

The UEFI was active on my ASUS computer when I installed Win 7 on the machine. When I did the WX Pro upgrade WX migrated to drive C with all of my Win 7 settings intact.

Here is a .pdf file of my Computer Management screen.

 

[Saltgrass]

Right now you have a Legacy install. The system is booting and running from C: which is the first partition on Disk 0.

Your SSD appears to be a Dynamic drive and does not show as active, so not bootable.

The way you boot the install media determines whether the system is running as UEFI or not. Since you migrated from a Legacy system, it will be Legacy.

I would say the migration, if you intended that to be your primary install, did not go as expected. If you describe what utility you used an the process, maybe someone will have some suggestions.

Could I ask you why all the Logical Partitions? In case you don't know, Windows can handle up to 4 Primary partitions on one MBR configured drive. Or 3 Primary and 1 extended. A GPT configured drive, which you don't yet seem to have can handle around 128 Primary partitions, I have heard.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

As far as I know there's no way to convert a Dynamic disk to Basic without deleting the partition.
So you will lose whatever is on it at this point.

I had to do this in the last year too.

Delete Partition, then Convert to Basic Disk.

You will have to do that and then restore your Windows install to it.
If it became changed to Dynamic during the cloning process the same thing may happen again.

You may need to install Windows 7 on the SSD and then upgrade to Windows 10 again.
That's what I had to do to get from my Insider Program version of Windows 10 to my normal version.

If you have to do that, unplug the other drives (if possible change the plug for Drive 0 to the SSD) until you have it booting to Windows 10 on the SSD.

If it works like it did for me from then on it will boot to the SSD, but if it doesn't you can change the boot order in the Bios.

Mike

 

[ussnorway]

Another option is to use the download tool to make a bootable usb from the Link Removed,

• Remove any files you need off the ssd and format it back to 'Unallocated Space'
• Temp remove/ unplug all hdd but the ssd and install Windows 10 onto the ssd drive... I recommend a gpt (install usb and format) you can replug the hdd again after and sort your files as you like

You have already done the upgrade to WX from W7 and DON'T need to redo in order to get a fresh WX install with working key from Microsoft however a new WX install will be blank-basic Windows and your old W7 programs will need to be re-installed or replaced with new software... also note the old copy of WX (with W7 software) on the other hdd will remain activated and bootable for at least the end of your first year should you need it.

 

[wynand32]

This seems like a good thread for this question...

So, I had Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 successfully dual-booting from an SSD drive plugged into in the first port on my UEFI motherboard. I had the usual boot options on this drive.

I installed Windows 10 Preview many months ago to a second SSD that I purchased for that purpose, plugged into the third port on my motherboard. Windows 10 Preview configured that drive as the boot drive. From that point forward, my system would boot directly to Windows 10 Preview, bypassing the previous dual-boot configuration completely.

Now, in order to boot to the Win7/Win8.1 dual-boot configuration, I have to go into UEFI and manually select that drive to boot from. Note that in UEFI, that drive is NOT an option for default boot. UEFI sees the boot sector on the Windows 10 Preview drive and offers that physical drive as an option, but not the boot sector on the Win7/Win8.1 drive.

I'd like to switch to the original Win7/Win8.1 as the default boot drive. However, as I mentioned it's not an option in UEFI. In Windows 10 Preview, only that option shows up in system settings, and in Win7/Win8.1 only those two options show up. EasyBCD only sees the same.

In short, there are two boot configurations, one on each drive. I'd never seen this before, and I'm not sure how to switch to the other drive as the default.

Any ideas? The only option I can think of at this point is to blow everything away and start from scratch.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I'm surprised that EasyBCD doesn't see all the boot options.
Can you use the Add option to add the unseen operating system to the list, by selecting the drive it's on?

I have had the situation you are describing, with a boot sector on two different drives.
I was able to remove the one I did't want Windows to see using EasyBCD.

Mike

PS. Here's some info I got from Falcon NW, recently when I was switching my Windows 10 install from my C:\ drive to a new SSD that I had added. See if any of it helps you.

I didn't have to do this myself when I plugged my other drives back in it didn't see my old OS and just booted to the SSD with no tweaking.

2. After you are done installing Windows 10, turn the system off and reconnect the other drives. Then reboot, but as you are rebooting tap the <Del> key to get into the BIOS.

Once in the BIOS if you go to the BOOT tab and find Hard Drive BBS Priorities, you can select the new SSD as the first boot option and disable all other boot options in this menu.

(This makes it so the computer will only boot from this drive automatically, you have to put in a special key combination during the POST process to get it to boot from any other drive.)

 

[wynand32]

Actually, thanks, yes, poking around a little more on EasyBCD did the trick. I managed to get the Win7/Win8.1 drive recognized as a boot option by adding it via EasyBCD, and then I added the Win10 Preview option manually. Then, I went into UEFI and set that drive as default, and I get all three options (Win7/Win8.1/Win10Preview) at boot.

Funny enough, I messed up the configuration somehow on the Win10Preview drive, and now if I select that drive to boot from, it's hosed. But it doesn't matter at this point, because I can boot from the other drive. At some point when I have some time, I'm going to blow everything away and start from scratch just to clean it all up. I just need to make sure I don't need these other OS's first.

Thanks again!

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Glad you got it fixed.

Talking about blowing everything away, that's what I did recently, just got rid of everything, put in a new SSD, installed Windows 8 and upgraded it all the way to Windows 10.

It feels good to be back with everything simplified again.

Mike

 

[ussnorway]

Actually, thanks, yes, poking around a little more on EasyBCD did the trick. I managed to get the Win7/Win8.1 drive recognized as a boot option by adding it via EasyBCD, and then I added the Win10 Preview option manually. Then, I went into UEFI and set that drive as default, and I get all three options (Win7/Win8.1/Win10Preview) at boot

fyi you can press [windows key] + [r] type "msconfig" (ignore quotes) and then press [enter]

Select the boot system you no longer want and press delete; {restart system}

• You can't delete the system you are currently booted into,
  
• You can't delete the default system... {work around} you just make the currently booted into system default instead,
  
• You can't recover this entry once you delete it so be sure!