Placed an SSD in the laptop, yet Windows continues to start from the HDD.
Placed an SSD in the laptop, yet Windows continues to start from the HDD.
I just got a new laptop and added an SSD because everyone says HDDs are really slow. I transferred all files from the old drive to the SSD so that when I booted from the SSD in BIOS, it worked properly. At first I set the SSD to MBR. After booting from the SSD, everything ran smoothly with no errors. I waited until after rebooting before connecting to Wi-Fi and started updates. Once I adjusted my display settings and browser, I shut it down for the night. When I woke up, it booted from the HDD again—no changes saved. Later I rebooted into BIOS and booted from the SSD, everything returned to how it was. Now I’m stuck in a loop: shutting down and seeing "Update and Shutdown," or restarting to boot from HDD. I’m thinking about reinstalling Windows or wiping all partitions on the HDD so the SSD forces a boot, after making a backup from a USB drive. In BIOS I changed the load order and even removed the HDD boot option, but it still works when I turn off or restart. Any tips would be appreciated—I really need to fix this.
If you completely remove the HDD, boot into Windows using the SSD, restart, and it should function. After that, attempt to reinstall the HDD. Additionally, consider deleting the EFI partition from the HDD to avoid it becoming bootable.
Ensure it's configured for your primary storage. It appears the issue arises only during restarts since it wasn't selected at startup.
You can delete the EFI partition without opening the laptop by using disk management tools or recovery software that allow you to wipe or move partitions remotely.
This was another choice I considered, and I'm still working on creating a backup.