Possessing two nearby disks but unable to start the W10 USB installer
Possessing two nearby disks but unable to start the W10 USB installer
It's a complicated situation but I'll do my best to simplify. I used an old laptop's hard drive and connected it to a new desktop with two drives already installed. The system had a Windows boot file, but I couldn't delete the existing ones. Recently, after cleaning the PC, another drive appeared next to the C: drive. I reinstalled Windows 10, but when creating a bootable USB with Rufus it failed with error 0xc000000e. I tried BCD on the laptop drive and found another OS, but I can't delete that partition or boot into it manually. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Windows is annoying and I'm equally confused. Together they make a big mess. Need some help, I'm running out of time.
Choose MBR or GPT during Rufus setup. Ensure BIOS settings are either legacy support or UEFI based on your configuration.
Your Rufus configuration uses UEFI without CSM, but GPT setup isn't working. Both NTFS and FAT32 failed; only NTFS provided an error.
For devices six years or older, using legacy BIOS and MBR is recommended. You might consider formatting the HDD on a different machine.
Consider using only UEFI settings for boot choices. If issues persist, remove the added disk and restart into Windows again. Then, connect a USB dock/caddy or SATA-to-USB adapter, add the drive there, and wipe it. [Note] You might also attempt a bootable OS such as Linux LiveUSB or GParted, creating a USB and booting from it.
It seems you believe simply managing the disk and deleting partitions would solve everything. The format utility in Explorer isn’t very helpful. Clearing Windows installations feels like an overreaction.