Problem with PC failing to boot Windows after switching to a secondary drive.
Problem with PC failing to boot Windows after switching to a secondary drive.
So i just swapped a hard drive from my PC—not the Windows OS drive—but before I bought an SSD, my Windows was on that SSD. After the switch, Windows won’t boot and I can only access BIOS. The SSD is recognized, but Windows isn’t detected because when I set it to UEFI - Legacy and chose it as the boot drive, it shows a message like “no bootable drive detected connect” or “restart/try again.” However, when I plug in my old original drive, Windows boots normally. It also shows a blue screen with three options: “Windows I have 3 drives in my PC,” and two of them display Windows while the other restarts the PC. Windows 1 is the SSD, and Windows 10 is the original drive. I recently reinstalled Windows on the SSD too. I’m confused about this situation and wondering if it’s related to dual boot setup or something else. Can I fix it without reinstalling Windows again?
It seems the EFI boot partition on your other drive was probably detected by the Windows installer during installation on your new drive, preventing a separate one from being created. After removal, Windows doesn’t know how to start. This explains why it’s advised to clear all other drives during installation—likely you’ll need a fresh setup again, using only the drive you’re installing Windows onto and the USB flash drive for installation, which is common now.
Once the issue is fixed, using a partition manager such as Paragon Partition Manager Community Edition can help remove any hidden Windows partitions left on the old drive. This ensures Windows doesn’t present conflicting boot options when both drives are connected, avoiding potential problems or slow startup after the fix.
I thought that too, thanks for the clarification. I'll likely just transfer the files to another drive in the meantime, since I'm planning to buy a new 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD soon and will do a clean reinstall then.
Well, I'm glad it worked out, but that's really not the way it should be done. The EFI boot partition is created specifically in support of a particular hardware configuration and since you've changed hardware by adding a new SSD it's actually not specifically for your current configuration, but so long as it works and since you're going to be getting a different SSD soon as you said, then you can simply do a clean install then but when you do be sure to disconnect all the other drives until after the installation.