Windows 10 System is booting from wrong primary drive.

[tearendt]

I'm new to the forum and am not an IT guru.... just a senior that needs to have a working PC for my consulting work and hobbies. I built this PC back in 2014 with quality components that hopefully would last for many years. It has an SSD drive for windows 10 Home OS and program files along with 2 internal data drives and 1 external drive. Recently I noticed that the SSD drive was filling up and was intending to purchase a new larger SSD and cloning the old to the new. I checked the bios and noticed that I have one of the data drives selected as the primary boot drive. I might add that over these last 3 years I have had relatively few issues with this PC. In bios I changed the primary boot drive to the SSD drive and problems started.... 1 BSOD..... shutdown issues with Task Host Manager.... Start Button and Windows key not working etc. Finally I switched the primary boot drive back to the data drive in BIOS and things cleared up. I have AVG and Malwarebytes running and don't think a virus is involved. It seems that part of the boot process relies on whatever is on the data drive. I'd like to get everything on the SSD C: drive so I can clone it and have everything work properly.

Any help appreciated.
Tim

 

[kemical]

Hi,
so did you install Windows to the data drive? I only ask because of it being a primary partition.

Personally I would perform a clean install on the SSD and use the install process to wipe both primary partitions as well choosing where I wanted windows to reside.

If you need a new iso of the latest Windows 10 build (1709) then use the media creation tool over at Microsoft here:
Download Windows 10

Download a new iso and burn it to either disk or usb and boot from that. Remember when your asked to input an activation key just click 'I don't have one' and Windows 10 will activate automatically when you get online.

 

[tearendt]

There is a folder named Windows Image Backup on the data drive that was set to be the priority boot drive. Both data drives have only a single large partition. The SSD drive has the C: partition and an un-allocated partition. Thanks for the suggestion regarding the clean install. Can this be done without impacting my program files?

 

[nmsuk]

You could unplug all but the ssd. Boot off the media Kemical suggested and then do a repair install to make the ssd the primary boot disk. After that reattach the other drives and confirm the ssd is the primary boot in the bios and if not make it so.

 

[kemical]

Can this be done without impacting my program files?

Well a clean install will wipe everything.

You could try the above suggestion?

 

[ddrnic]

Not one single fine answer.
Prim is a boot device can be CD, USB, or ancient 3.5 inch floppy disk. It is mostly used for installing OS.
If you think logics then how did you installed OS with SSD as boot one!?
This is just impossible.
So it seems you managed to restore it to previous state. Now make boot CD for 2nd task to transfer Complete computer restore job.

 

[kemical]

eh?

 

[nmsuk]

Whats wrong with the two fine suggestions? Kemicals would fix the issue with a clean install and mine would just fix the ssd not being the primary disk.

 

[tearendt]

Thanks to all. I'll save my data and do the repair. If that works great.... otherwise I'll do the cvlea n install.

 

[tearendt]

The repair seemed to clear up all of my issues and I have the bios boot priority pointing to my existing SSD. Would it be safe for me to clone my existing SSD to the new larger one I purchased? I originally downloaded the free EaseUs Todo cloning application to attempt this.

 

[kemical]

The repair seemed to clear up all of my issues and I have the bios boot priority pointing to my existing SSD. Would it be safe for me to clone my existing SSD to the new larger one I purchased? I originally downloaded the free EaseUs Todo cloning application to attempt this.

If your sure the issue is fixed then you should be fine to go ahead with the clone although I'd still back up what you can just in case.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

First you said that you had unallocated space on your SSD, if it's a usable amount of space you should add it to the C:\ drive.

I'd like to add that if you are using your SSD for Windows that doesn't mean that you have to install everything else on it as well.
I have Windows and a few small programs on my SSD but everything else is installed on other drives.

This will keep some free space on the SSD.

Windows doesn't really care where you install the stuff.

If it's working fine now you can go ahead and clone it.
Also when you have everything working make a system image of the C:\ drive so that you can get back to where you are if anything gets messed up later.

I use EaseUS Todo backup, it's free, it works great, and it's the easiest to use of any backup software that I've tried.
You can literally make a system image with 3 mouse clicks.

Best free backup software for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/vista - EaseUS Todo Backup Free

Mike

 

[kemical]

I'd back up BEFORE you try the clone as I specified above.