Windows 10 won't boot after HDD removal

[VictorG]

In my Lenovo E540 notebook I had win 8.1 later upgraded to Win 10. After a while I added an SSD into the system and installed fresh Win 10 there. So each time I turned on the computer I got the dual boot menu from which I could boot from SSD no problem. Recently I removed the old HDD and the notebook stopped booting from SSD. By reading all the forums I learned that's because the boot files are all stored in the HDD instead of SSD. The problem is that in the meantime I have tried bootrec commands while the HDD was removed and now even after returning the HDD back the system won't boot from SSD.

I Removed the HDD again and tried shrinking the partition on ssd to create boot partition, but it won't let me to shrink. I will now try to upload a picture with the partitions on my ssd. Can anyone help me please? Desperate.

 

[VictorG]

As I mentioned that I had dual boot I figured I would boot from the win 10 stored on the HDD and restore data from SSD.
So I loaded the windows from HDD, but it did not assign any drive letter to the ssd, in disk management it shows as EFI system partition, the whole ssd. But as described above, in disk part it clearly shows 2 partitions. In disk part I assigned a letter to the partition 2 that contains the data. In windows that drive appeared, but when trying to open the drive I get access denied message.

 

[Regedit32]

Hi VictorG,

Welcome to the Forum.

I suspect what's going on is the Boot configuration on the original hard drive is not migrated to the SSD drive.

You'll need to move the Reserved partition from old drive to your SSD, then mark as Active.

I don't really do much in this area, but it seems based on your two posts you are comfortable with how to access Disk Management and Command Prompts, so here is a video explaining the situation and showing what to do:

If that still does not help, keep an eye on your thread as others in our Forum are wizards at this kind of thing.

Regards,

Regedit32

 

[VictorG]

HI Regedit32 and thank you both for warm welcome and the advise. Actually I have already seen that video, but the difference with my situation here is that I cannot boot into the system even when I returned the HDD back. So windows located on ssd will not run. I can only run Windows located on HDD, but that's not what we want and the instructions on the video assume I have the windows from SSD loaded.

So really desperate. Hope all the gurus on this forum will k ow how to fix this and will help!

 

[VictorG]

Here is another idea.. I loaded win 10 installer from USB. As you can see on the picture it recognises the same two partitions from the picture on my original post. I was thinking about deleting the partition 1 (MSR) if it let's me to then create a new one, then get out of the installer, go to command line and disk part and try to make it a bootable partition. 2 concerns:

1. I am no pro by any means don't really understand this so I assume this is might as well be very very wrong and one should not do this. Just need an advice from someone more experienced.

2. Don't really know how to make it a bootable partition

 

[davehc]

Apparently you have an original Windows 10 OS installation media..
Boot up an select the repair options and see if it will repair the boot from there.

 

[VictorG]

HI davehc!

Thank you for your advise.

I just used the one available for download. I had upgraded to win 10 from win 8.1 that was originally on my laptop on the HDD.

However that was among the first things I tried, but it was not able to repair

 

[VictorG]

I Just did it. I removed the 128 MB partition and created a new one. Now it shows in FAT32.

One more thing. In disk part the volume with Windows 10 installed shows as hidden. Is it OK?