I thought you tried repairing with a Win 10 install media and it didn't work.
I suggested trying to do a startup repair with a Win 7 install media.
I fixed an unbootable PC where the bootloader is in the Win 8.1 partition/OS.
The startup repair didn't work with a bootable 8.1 disc, but i did fix the problem using a Win 7 disc.
You are giving conflicting information- you are mixing up two separate issues as far as I can tell.
Let's start from beginning.
As I understand drive 2 is an image restore from an image backup or a clone (from an external drive?).
Looking at drive 2, all you need to do is move the recovery partitions (or delete them - no real use here anyway), then extend the I drive to use up the unallocated space.
Now it is hard to tell if you need a system reserved partition or not - you probably do but you do not have one. You can have the boot files in same partition as I drive (see C drive for example), but I doubt an Insider version installed like that.
So when you expand the I drive as above, leave around 300 MB space unallocated.
Then disconnect all drives except disk 2 aand use Macrium as I said earlier and it should add the required boot files so it boots.
Of course, you will need to select that disk from bios as the boot drive.
If it fails to boot after this, then there is something wrong with your image or original version you cloned from.
If i wanted to start over with a new SSD after these boot issues i would do a Diskpart Clean on the new SSD.
That should clean up the old MBR that might be causing problems going forward.
Well, I went back and tried it again. I did a "restore" of the disc image from Macrium. It bombed out when I tried to boot. I went back to my "regular" Win 10 and ran BCDEdit. As it turned out the drive letter was missing from the boot menu. I assigned the correct drive letter and then tried it again and it booted up correctly. I then went back and use the Minitool and expanded the partition to include the unused section. I also did a fix MBR in Minitool. Rebooted and selected the Preview version and it booted up properly with the expanded partition. I now have the full use of the new (bigger) SSD.
So it all works OK after screwing with it for 3 days. Murphy's Law has struck!!!! LOL
Thanks/Jack
Quote