SOLVED Broke Win10 after reinstalling Win7 on another HDD

[GShocked]

I had Windows 10 working fine but after activating Windows 7 on a different hard drive on the same computer via telephone activation it broke. I had to do Ctrl + Alt + Del to open task manager and start explorer.exe with admin privileges and then start Chrome. The desktop manager, project spartan, the buttons on the right-side of the explorer, the start button, and the search bar don't work. I can't open settings or anything.

If I just uninstall Windows 7, will Windows 10 fix itself? I tried using Gyazo GIF to make a gif of what was happening but it gave me a large error window.

 

[GShocked]

Also, when I try to open a video it says this:

"No mapping between account names and security IDs was done"

 

[Trouble]

Not sure what your current status is?
Does your Windows 7 installation boot and run OK? Back it up with a system image.
You say you have two (2) physical drives, one with 7 and the other with 10 installed. Will the machine boot and run either OS with one or the other physical drives disconnected.
Sounds to me like installing 7 after 10 was already present may have altered the boot loader config data.

Have you tried booting from the Windows 10 installation media and attempted to perform a startup repair or....
If your 10 installation will boot you can use taskmanager to access your installation media for that OS and perform an in-place / upgrade repair overtop of itself.
Personally I would disconnect the 7 drive when you attempt this so as not to alter its' boot loader if it is even present on the 7 drive at all.

Chances are that if you didn't have one drive disconnected when you installed the second OS then the boot files for both OSs are on the one drive.

Dual booting can be problematic and often it is best to use a Multi-Boot technique rather than dual booting. Where you keep the installs unique and discreet from one another by disconnect one drive when installing a separate OS and then when you're done and have reconnected both drives use your motherboards function key, (usually F11 or F12, but can be different depending on the BIOS and the Board) to select which drive to boot at startup.
You can usually see a press (whatever) key, for boot menu, early on in your system's POST menu (Power On Self Test).

Welcome to the forum and keep us posted on how you progress and what you decide to do, going forward.
Regards
Randy

 

[GShocked]

Spoiler

Not sure what your current status is?
Does your Windows 7 installation boot and run OK? Back it up with a system image.
You say you have two (2) physical drives, one with 7 and the other with 10 installed. Will the machine boot and run either OS with one or the other physical drives disconnected.
Sounds to me like installing 7 after 10 was already present may have altered the boot loader config data.

Have you tried booting from the Windows 10 installation media and attempted to perform a startup repair or....
If your 10 installation will boot you can use taskmanager to access your installation media for that OS and perform an in-place / upgrade repair overtop of itself.
Personally I would disconnect the 7 drive when you attempt this so as not to alter its' boot loader if it is even present on the 7 drive at all.

Chances are that if you didn't have one drive disconnected when you installed the second OS then the boot files for both OSs are on the one drive.

Dual booting can be problematic and often it is best to use a Multi-Boot technique rather than dual booting. Where you keep the installs unique and discreet from one another by disconnect one drive when installing a separate OS and then when you're done and have reconnected both drives use your motherboards function key, (usually F11 or F12, but can be different depending on the BIOS and the Board) to select which drive to boot at startup.
You can usually see a press (whatever) key, for boot menu, early on in your system's POST menu (Power On Self Test).

Welcome to the forum and keep us posted on how you progress and what you decide to do, going forward.
Regards
Randy

I have Win 7 and Win 10 on totally different HDDs. My 10 is on a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD and my 7 is on an old Seagate Barracuda 250GB HDD. When I boot, I get the Windows boot manager that lets me select windows 7 or windows technical preview. I am not dual booting.

I can't create a recovery drive for windows 10 because I can't open control panel or anything. I can't do an upgrade/repair because I can't open settings. If I try to run "control" into the "create a new task" in the task manager, it gives me "No mapping between account names and security IDs was done".

I should note that I used my Windows 7 copy to upgrade to Windows 10 and then I reinstalled Windows 7 on another HDD and kept windows 10. I only recently activated my Windows 7 copy when I needed to run something that wasn't working in compatibility mode. Then this all happened. I think that was implied though.

 

[Trouble]

When I boot, I get the Windows boot manager that lets me select windows 7 or windows technical preview. I am not dual booting.

I'm not arguing semantics but if you are using the Windows boot manager to select an OS then I'm pretty sure that you are, by definition dual booting.

Will your Windows 7 OS boot without the Windows 10 disk connected?
If not then the boot config files for both OSs are on the 10 disk.

At this point I'm not sure what would be a good outcome.
You could try, with just the 10 drive connected, booting from the installation media and using the Repair link to perform a Startup Repair and see if that will work.
Although that will probably overwrite the boot config for the 7 OS.
You may look into a third party program like EasyBCD and see if you can use that to sort out the problem.

 

[bassfisher6522]

I have Win 7 and Win 10 on totally different HDDs. My 10 is on a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD and my 7 is on an old Seagate Barracuda 250GB HDD. When I boot, I get the Windows boot manager that lets me select windows 7 or windows technical preview. I am not dual booting.

When you installed 10 on the SSD did you pull the power/data cable from the rest of the drives? If not the MBR is still on the original C drive and therefore considered dual booting as Trouble has pointed out.

should note that I used my Windows 7 copy to upgrade to Windows 10 and then I reinstalled Windows 7 on another HDD and kept windows 10. I only recently activated my Windows 7 copy when I needed to run something that wasn't working in compatibility mode. Then this all happened. I think that was implied though.

This may be another issue as you upgraded an all ready activated OS and now tyring to reactivate it the original OS with same Key on different HDD....that can't be done. As MS will only allow 1 active copy of an OS at a time.

My advice would be to start completely over....clean install 7 on original HDD, the pull the power/data cable off it, connect SSD and clean install 10 (latest build 10162) on the SSD. Then reconnect power/data cables to HDD and boot up. Then you should be able to F12 to show the boot menu and select a drive to boot from or set the drive boot order to a specific drive to boot from. Which is what I do.

I have 8.1 Pro on SSHD and windows 10 10162 on SSHD and use the F12 key to select my drive of choice. This type of setup is commonly referred to multi-boot as you're using multiple HDD's. Once you've done the procedure a few times it's pretty painless...although it can be a PITA at times but well worth the effort in the end because the MBR or GPT are on separate drives so no chance for any mishaps.

 

[GShocked]

When you installed 10 on the SSD did you pull the power/data cable from the rest of the drives? If not the MBR is still on the original C drive and therefore considered dual booting as Trouble has pointed out.



This may be another issue as you upgraded an all ready activated OS and now tyring to reactivate it the original OS with same Key on different HDD....that can't be done. As MS will only allow 1 active copy of an OS at a time.

My advice would be to start completely over....clean install 7 on original HDD, the pull the power/data cable off it, connect SSD and clean install 10 (latest build 10162) on the SSD. Then reconnect power/data cables to HDD and boot up. Then you should be able to F12 to show the boot menu and select a drive to boot from or set the drive boot order to a specific drive to boot from. Which is what I do.

I have 8.1 Pro on SSHD and windows 10 10162 on SSHD and use the F12 key to select my drive of choice. This type of setup is commonly referred to multi-boot as you're using multiple HDD's. Once you've done the procedure a few times it's pretty painless...although it can be a PITA at times but well worth the effort in the end because the MBR or GPT are on separate drives so no chance for any mishaps.

Thanks, I will do that.