How to assigning a particular boot drive in Windows 10?

[Will Kanoff]

Hi all!

I have DELL Alienware Aurora R4 machine with three hard drives:

1. (Local Disk)C: - (Windows 7) the “original” one that I bought with the computer.

2. (OS)D: - (Windows 10 with all updates) the one I’ve added after the “original” started to show signs of degradation.

3. (STORE)F: - (no OS) the one I use just to store stuff.

I’ve had dual boot and everything was hunky-dory until last week the C drive have finally kicked the bucket.

First the computer refused to shut down until I forced it. And next morning it took more than TWO hours to boot. When I finally got to the window explorer the C drive was still there but I couldn’t access or do anything to it.

In the old times I could just remove it and set boot priorities in BIOS to boot from drive D. But if I actually remove the dead drive now, the computer says that it has nothing to boot from.


It appears that with UEFI mode enabled

1. I don’t see the actual drives in the BIOS (It only shows general source types, like Hard Drive, CD/DVD, etc.) and therefore cannot boot from a particular internal drive.

2. I cannot assign Active Partition

3. I cannot remove the dead C drive

So, what the heck am I supposed to do?

P.S. Could I just buy a new drive, clone the D drive to it, call it C and use the D for something else?



Please, HELP!

 

[Tim Locke]

Someone else will know better than I do but....it bused to work like this before UEFI.

Unplug C: Plug what is now D: into Sata 0 which is where C was.

Boot from a CD/DVD of Windows 10 and then I am only 75% sure you can 'repair' the boot stuff onto the drive as that is what is missing I think.

However it works I am sure you will have to boot from an install disk.

 

[Will Kanoff]

Someone else will know better than I do but....it bused to work like this before UEFI.

Unplug C: Plug what is now D: into Sata 0 which is where C was.

Boot from a CD/DVD of Windows 10 and then I am only 75% sure you can 'repair' the boot stuff onto the drive as that is what is missing I think.

However it works I am sure you will have to boot from an install disk.

Thanks Tim,

I feel too that repairing MBR would be the way to go.
Will need to read up on it a bit more though.

 

[Comp Cmndo]

Thanks Tim,

I feel too that repairing MBR would be the way to go.
Will need to read up on it a bit more though.

UEFI is GPT, not MBR.
http://www.dell.com/support/article...ndows-7--8--81-and-10-on-your-dell-pc?lang=en

 

[Will Kanoff]

UEFI is GPT, not MBR.
http://www.dell.com/support/article...ndows-7--8--81-and-10-on-your-dell-pc?lang=en

Thank you! And thanks for the link. The instructions say I will have to change the drive letter. Isn't it dangerous?

 

[Saltgrass]

I don't know where you are right now but you probably have a legacy install with the boot files on the old drive.

It is always best to get an idea of the drive configuration prior to giving advice. If there is any way to boot to the install media or a recovery drive, maybe you could run Diskpart to get the basic layout.

If it is a legacy system, the boot files have to be on an active partition.

 

[Will Kanoff]

Okay, I did it! The solution is to create the missing EFI System partition:

https://www.eightforums.com/general...art-due-missing-efi-partition.html#post419519

Thanks to all.