Moved drive to another computer - won't boot

dcol · 05 May 2017

Hi all,
I am trying to move a drive with Windows 10 Pro x86 from a dell 755 to a 7010. Win10 boots fine when I put it in a 745, 755, or 780, but not the 7010. The 7010 is set for Legacy ACHI. All I get is a blue logo and the spinning circle dots. Does the same in safe mode. There are no add-in cards or USB devices. I also tried the disk in an HP 6300, which has the same specs as the 7010, and it also does not boot. Tried start-up repair. Tried rebuilding BCD. Tried Reset PC - didn't run.

I am out of ideas. Anyone?

WOT · 05 May 2017

Did you originally do a UEFI install on the drive in question and what are the BIOS settings on the 745, 755, and 780 that work (UEFI or Legacy)?

dcol · 05 May 2017

Always been MBR Legacy ACHI. UEFI is not selected on the 7010, using legacy. the other systems are pre UEFI. The BIOS settings on the 745/755/780 are ACHI. My only thought is there is something different how a UEFI capable system boots even in Legacy mode. Also since I am using 32 bit OS, I have to use legacy. UEFI is not supported with 32 bit OS'es

I even installed a fresh Windows 10 Pro x86 on the 7010, then tried to replace the C drive partition with the original drives C partition. Still spinning circle.

dcol · 06 May 2017

here's a twist. The drive will now boot if I unplug the DVD SATA drive. Happens with either HP 6300 or Dell 780 and 7010. I can leave the SATA port active, just pull the cable off the motherboard and then it boots. After I booted, I made sure all the drivers were current. Even tried the Rapid Storage driver but I don't think the system gets that far in the boot process.

Next step I did was to upgrade Windows 10. I started with version 1607. Plugged in the SATA cable, then did the update to 1703. System restarted and applied the update but still does not boot when it was finished with the update with the SATA cable plugged in. Had to shut down, pull the SATA cable then reboot and it came right up. Happens on multiple systems, so it isn't a hardware issue. Even tried different disk drives.

I even tried using an a PCIe SATA adapter (Marvell 91xx) and it does the same thing with the DVD plugged in. And yes I have tried different DVD/CDROM drives. One more thing. Works fine with a hard drive or SSD plugged into the motherboard SATA port, Just not with an optical drive.

The original Windows 10 image came from a Dell Optiplex 745.

UPDATE
Problem solved. Had to fix the CDROM property class.
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Deleted the Upper and Lower filters and removed the additional cdrom drives.
What I did was export the key from a working system and then Import the entire key into this one.
Hope this helps any others who may run into this.