Choose any other boot drive besides the C drive.
Choose any other boot drive besides the C drive.
Your MBR is typically found on your C drive. This location is set by the BIOS to begin the boot process. Removing the C drive would shift it to another partition, and without an MBR, you'd encounter a boot failure (no OS detected). The simplest solution is to recreate the MBR on the same disk where your operating system resides, following the guidance at https://www.partitionwizard.com/help/rebuild-mbr.html. Good luck!
Attempted the fix but it failed. The operating system is still recognizing the drive as a secondary storage device.
The MBR is located on disc 0 but should be on disc 1 during a rebuild. This issue typically arises when swapping connectors on the motherboard, though it can still be resolved by selecting a different drive for the MBR rebuild.
I've already attempted to start it with disc 0 disconnected from the PC, but rebuilding the MBR failed even with a flash drive and Windows installer. It reported access denied. When I boot directly from disc 1, it says no OS is detected, though I'm currently using it. Would swapping the motherboard connectors help? It feels odd given what I've mentioned before.
Makes sense that you get the error when trying to boot from disk 1 as it has no MBR, this is what your are trying to remediate. If you swap the connectors, remove the non-os drive and then use the usb to rebuild the MBR, it should work. You can also try cloning the MBR partition from disk 0 to disk 1 but it is a pain in the ass and you will more than likely loose data
I'll attempt to fix it via USB, and I'm hoping the outcome will differ from the previous one. Copying the MBR from disc 0 and the entire disc 1 to another drive might help, don't you think? I have backup HDDs available if needed.