PC will not boot into windows without secondary drives installed

So whenever I remove my secondary drives at all for any reason it will no long boot into windows and will say something along the lines that it cannot detect the drive with windows 10. So I end up not being able to boot into windows. this is a problem because one of my HDDs are starting to go bad and id like to be able to boot into windows after that drive goes bad. And id also like to keep all of my information and games without having to reset.

this good?

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Samuria said:

Welcome to the forum what's happened is the boot files are on the second hard drive often because you installed Windows with two drives we need to see a screenshot from disk management showing both drives with details

this good?

You did not gave us the full screen image and Happy drive (C:) isn't shown.
But we can see that the System partition is in drive 2, it is the active partition and that C: is on another drive.
System and C: partition should be on same drive.

Please post a Disk manager that shows whole Window and expand the columns so we can read them.
How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

Paul Black said:

Hello @snekkie,

You might find this useful . . .

 Partitions Screenshots

Please post [ upload ] a screenshot of your partitions.

IMPORTANT:

• By default, some columns are compressed. FULLY widen ALL the columns, making sure that the contents within them are FULLY visible.

> How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management at Ten Forums

I hope this helps.

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Paul Black said:

Hello @snekkie,




[1] Did you Clean Install with the other drive attached?
[2 It sounds like the BOOTLOADER is on the other drive, therefore causing the Boot problem . . .

 Disconnect ALL Other Disks

It is highly recommended that you disconnect [ temporarily unplug ] ALL other Disks [ HDD's/SSD's/USB's ] BEFORE installing Windows. The reasons for this are . . .

• You CAN'T accidentally OVERWRITE a connected Disk.
• The BOOTLOADER [ boot configuration files ] will get installed on the correct Disk [ because Windows has the tendency to install the bootloader rather randomly on ANY connected Disk ], and therefore STOP problems with booting once the installation is complete.

Once the installation is complete . . .

• Check that the OS boots correctly.
• Check if the boot order in the BIOS/UEFI settings are correct [ if NOT, adjust accordingly ].
• Reconnectthe other Disks.

EXPLANATION:

Windows uses a different partition structure for BIOS/UEFI. During the installation process, Windows asks which Disk / Partition you want to use for the Windows C:\ drive, it does NOT however, necessarily use the same Disk for the other Partitions, and can therefore incorrectly create the hidden recovery partition on ANY attached Disk.

Additionally, for BIOS, if another Disk is left attached, and at a latter stage you remove that Disk, you will find that the OS will NOT boot. If you check the BIOS, you will see that the OS has assigned the AHCI/RAID setting instead of the LEGACY setting and set it up as RAID, therefore breaking the boot process.

I hope this helps.

when i had clean installed my windows i did it with the other drives disconnected

Please edit your profile with ALL hardware specs. It will help us to help you.
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums

There is no active partition on Happy drive. You need to copy system partition on drive 2 to drive 0
Are you familiar with disk image software?

Megahertz said:

Please edit your profile with ALL hardware specs. It will help us to help you.
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums

There is no active partition on Happy drive. You need to copy system partition on drive 2 to drive 0
Are you familiar with disk image software?

I have no clue how to do any of that and it also wont let me update my profile with all my specs. I need to solve this quickly as that G drive is about to go bad and id like to be able to use the PC without having to reset windows before that happens

snekkie said:

I have no clue how to do any of that and it also wont let me update my profile with all my specs. I need to solve this quickly as that G drive is about to go bad and id like to be able to use the PC without having to reset windows before that happens

The quick fix is, in a command prompt with admin privileges:

Code:

diskpart
select volume c
active
exit
bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: /f BIOS