strange results attempting to repair boot

I just wanted to share a weird experience I had and wanted to see if anyone had this experience before
So I installed an old hard drive into my pc then removed it. When I started up windows again, I was getting the "please install a proper boot device" I couldnt boot into my windows SSD

I created a windows 10 usb stick on another computer but instead of reinstalling, I wanted to see if I could fix the problem.

I went into command prompt and realized the boot partition didnt have a letter assigned to it so I assigned the letter E which still didnt work

I went back into command prompt and used the command bcdboot C:\windows but forgot to switch the C to an E so when I restarted the computer, instead of booting into the usb windows installation/repair menu, it booted up windows...

Heres the weird part, it didnt boot windows on the usb...it booted into windows on my regular windows SSD, I could see all my files and my local disk was my ssd and not the usb stick (see photo attached)

Now the only problem i'm having is, if I remove the usb stick, windows freezes.

Does anyone know the next step I can take to resolve this and make windows boot from my SSD again?

UPDATE: so it doesnt add a boot to the usb, it adds it to my samsung ssd ( i tried again since my samsung ssd is now C:") but it still boots from the usb and changes the usb from an installer to a booter for some reason

Did you changed the boot order in BIOS setup utility?

Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type below commands into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

Following commands will repair BCD Store.

Code:

Bootrec /scanos

Bootrec  /RebuildBcd

FreeBooter said:

Did you changed the boot order in BIOS setup utility?

Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type below commands into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

Following commands will repair BCD Store.

Code:

Bootrec /scanos

Bootrec  /RebuildBcd

I did change the order but still the same message

after using Bootrec /scanos it finds c:\windows
after using bootrec /RebuildBcd i get "the system cannot find the path specificd"

camilostatis said:

I went into command prompt and realized the boot partition didnt have a letter assigned to it so I assigned the letter E which still didnt work

I went back into command prompt and used the command bcdboot C:\windows but forgot to switch the C to an E so when I restarted the computer, instead of booting into the usb windows installation/repair menu, it booted up windows...

If you assigned the system partition the letter E: then why would you change C:\Windows to E:\Windows? There would be no E:\Windows, because E: was only the system partition, not the partition containing Windows.

The proper command probably would be:
bcdboot C:\Windows /s E: /f ALL
(assuming that your Windows partition retained drive letter C: in the command line environment)

diskpart
list volume

would tell you what drive letter the Windows partition was assigned.

NavyLCDR said:

If you assigned the system partition the letter E: then why would you change C:\Windows to E:\Windows? There would be no E:\Windows, because E: was only the system partition, not the partition containing Windows.

The proper command probably would be:
bcdboot C:\Windows /s E: /f ALL
(assuming that your Windows partition retained drive letter C: in the command line environment)

diskpart
list volume

would tell you what drive letter the Windows partition was assigned.

I tried that command line but it turns my usb bootable stick into actual windows 10, and it logs me into my windows 10 on my ssd. But I still cant login to windows 10 from the ssd directly

Recreate the USB flash drive using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool.

NavyLCDR said:

Recreate the USB flash drive using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool.

I basically did that but I used an older version of windows