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#11
At about 8 min in that video - you should have Legacy disabled, as your system disk is UEFI configured.
Should have legacy disabled or use UEFI boot - whatever the nomenclature is as I said.. your disk configuration is UEFI not legacy.
And then proceed with just the system disk.
All clear. In I go then.
- - - Updated - - -
Removed the drive, turned on the system. Returned BIOS to UEFI, enabled safe boot again. Won't run, even though there is only SSD in now. Booted the Hiren again, went to Macrium. Told it again to fix boot errors, told it the path is C:\Windows - it again recognized the hard drive and did its thing. Got the three green checkmarks again.
I restarted the computer, but it automatically went into recovery again. Choosing advanced restart options like safe mode, boot logging, etc etc didnt really change anything. Again it won't boot.
Frustration rising.
Clearly you can rescue any files you haven't already backed up.
The question becomes whether your Windows partition itself has in some way become irretrievably corrupt.
You say:
The way to avoid such stress and to provide yourself with a means of recovery within 2 hours or less is to have been using disk imaging regularly and routinely. I imagine that's what you will do once you have a functional system, however that's achieved.Frustration rising.
I suggest you now try this:
a. Create a disk image (saved to an external disk) of just your Windows partition on your system disk (any data partitions you created there can be left). (You could use the Macrium Reflect on your Hiren's disk).
b. Clean install Windows to unallocated space on that disk, which means as per the tutorial, deleting all partitions comprising your existing O/S (typically 4 for UEFI).
c. Check that boots.
d. Now, using the MR on Hiren's, restore the image of your original Windows partition in place of the newly created one.
Restart when completed: either automatic repair will sort booting out, or you can run Startup Repair or MAcrium's Fix Boot utility as necessary.
If still no success, it would be reaonable to assume your Windows partition is corrupt.
I guess my best friend should be a disk imaging program. I really ought to finally develop the routine of creating damned images.
Can you just clarify step b a bit please:
I should
- first delete all four partitions, turning 500gbsystem ssd into one big unallocated space partition
- start a windows install from a bootable usb stick
Also, before starting, should I reconnect my HDD now or leave it disconnected?
(b) is a clean install of Win 10 - for which you can see the entire tutorial in ... the Tutorial section.
Deleting partitions is prompted - see around Step 13/14 of that tutorial.
You can have your HDD in place or not in practice, and if there's no unallocated space on it that should be perfectly ok. Some suggest it's 'safest' to have just the system disk in place, so no partitions end up elsewhere. But if there's no unallocated space on your HDD and you have a full backup of it (e.g. a disk image) you should be perfectly ok.
Given the way you suggest drive letters may have changed, I'm inclined to suggest you have both disks in this instance to avoid any possible confusion.
Basically always think -'what could go wrong, and how can I avoid it, and have a backup if it does?'.
I guess I'll tattoo this now.
Deleted SSD partitions, installed fresh copy of windows off of the media creation tool. Restarted several times, booted in finely.
I had some issues with Macrium, kept giving me error 9 which google told me is an issue connected to SOURCE drive. I grabbed a fresh Macrium from the internet, copied into Hiren, and that one worked nicely.
Now, I assume I should attempt the image restore from Hiren? Another thing I noticed - originally I had 5 partitions, while now I have 4. Will this make a problem during the restore of the image I created?
I guess you're referring to the 2 Recovery partitions 1st & last in post #9. The first was obsolete, unused.
Now you restore the disk image you created of the old Windows partition in place of the new one just created using Macrium Reflect.