Upgraded HD Prior to Win10 Install now getting upgrade and boot errors

It also looks like you have the OS on one drive and all the programs on the other! That plus two more drives present are equaling the same problematic situation I ran into on the 29th! The two NON OS drives first need to be unplugged and the removal of the first 64gb drive saved the day as far as having an OS to work with.

The reason for the dual MBRs and temp install folders which you will find on the wrong drives is how the 10 installer works a little differently then with previous versions. The installer tends get confused as to where to put things and ends up failing with a return to the previous version's desktop after first hanging up upon the first restart and just getting past that new logo screen and all of a sudden... Nothing but a blank screen where then you have to hard boot in order to get back to the old version's desktop.

Been there done that several times! Once I read through the clean install guide the caution of "unplugging" and non OS drives hit home fast since I had a matching pair of drives in an array where I found the missing $Windows~BT and $Windows~WS folders on one of the two and the other saw the boot files placed there! "Goober Alert"!

One thing you could use there is an OS drive with a single primary even if it sees the tiny System Reserved partition not the 3.73gb seen on the 64gb SSD unavailable. What was done here with four drives involved was 1) putting a temp install of 7 on a second OS drive and allowed that to be upgraded! But that didn't work until repeat downloads and upgrade attempts failed either seeing an error popup appear or the blank screen on the first restart until the two storage drives were removed from the equation!

Once that was taken care the first upgrade suddenly started rolling! No further error messages appearing while the initial upgrade wasn't going to be the complete success story at the same time. Later after not being able to install softwares for the sound card, tv tuner card, and even antivirus! I ended up performing an Upgrade to Repair type install once the first was activated and yet the repair install didn't. Finally it came time to see a full clean install replace the upgrade over the upgrade.

For you Disk #2 and #3 will both need to be unplugged as well as figuring out how you are going to see the partitions layed out. Six partitions spread over two drives alone could see a working dual boot on one with the other set aside for storage and backup! You could keep the previous version running on the 64gb while tossing the temp install of that to upgrade over on the second once you had an OS partition leading the way since the front end has a nice 238gb available.

Night Hawk said:

For you Disk #2 and #3 will both need to be unplugged as well as figuring out how you are going to see the partitions layed out. Six partitions spread over two drives alone could see a working dual boot on one with the other set aside for storage and backup! You could keep the previous version running on the 64gb while tossing the temp install of that to upgrade over on the second once you had an OS partition leading the way since the front end has a nice 238gb available.

Thank you Night Hawk for the assist on this.

Just to clarify everything (although I think you had already figured it out) the way I had my drives laid out is that Disk 0 and Disk 1 were the only important drives on the system. Disk 0 is the OS (Windows 7) and Disk 1 is for all the programs and user folders. I moved my personal user folder over to drive F due to how large it is but the other two non administrator users on the computer still have their files stored on C.

Disk 3 is the new clone of Disk 0 with only the OS on it and the hidden partition. As you had guessed Disk 2 is basically a backup drive that I started using when I was having problems a year or so ago.

I do appreciate all the info you put into that post but I am still confused as to what I need to do and what steps to do it in in order to get to a point where I can upgrade to Windows 10. I would prefer to keep my settings and programs installed but if I have to do a clean install I am willing to do it. Could you or someone else give me a step by step kind of repair strategy for this mess? After I unplug drive 2 and 3 what do I do?

UPDATE: I went ahead and unplugged 2 and 3 and rebooted from the Win7 install CD. I had it do the Startup Repair option and it fixed the black screen startup issue. I am now having it try to do the Win10 install and will see how it goes. I notice that the EFI system partition is still on Disk 1.... Crossing fingers.

Even with an upgrade you will find that some things simply have to be reinstalled or newer versions of have to be found. I had to upgrade the antivirus program from 2014 to at first the 2016 beta went on and after an Upgrade to Repair the initial upgrade that was loaded with fun city full of .... headaches! I ended up with the 2015 version which did finally go on!

Fortunately I already had a second identical OS drive I could toss a temp install of 7 onto and upgrade that to 10 at first to avoid trashing the now former 7 host drive keeping that intact to end up with a working dual boot. If you first Disk 0 SSD was a bit larger I would say try tossing a second install of 7 on a new second temp primary after shrinking the 7 original down like I did on the second case I upgraded here.

At the moment I will be finally cleaning off the first of two storage drives to see a full system of 7 put onto that when the 7 Pro upgraded over somehow didn't see a Windows.old folder created on the second machine there. I needed to see that upgrade since the clean instal to the second partition made up wouldn't activate being on a separate machine to begin with. So I ended up with a 10/10 rather then 10/4 dual boot when not able to revert the upgrade back once the clean install was later activated. Now I will restore 7 to a 1tb drive I will add into that case to nuke the first primary and move the 10 clean install on the second back in order to see that one expand out to the full 456gb on the 500gb drive there.

With the situation you have there trying to run two OSs when program folders are on other drives you got quite a mess to contend with! And with the first drive cramped as it is you wouldn't want to split that up unless only you were using the 128gb as a test drive and not your main OS drive for 7. This is why the first partition on the second OS drive seen as letter "L" looks inviting for a 10 upgrade over a temp install of 7 before being able to tend to the eventual clean install you will want.

Originally I had cloned the 7 host drive here before I ended up needing a clean install from having the two storage drives left plugged in which ended up being the cause for concern until I cleaned up that mess and 10 went onto the temp clean install. It sill ended up being buggy however and likewise as long as the upgrade over your clone of 7 activates you will want to plan a full clean install afterwards! Just be sure to nuke the clone to upgrade off completely to see a fresh brand new primary taken care of first to insure no invalid system partition information or some other unexpected error comes up.

maestroc said:

This has been a nightmare this morning...

When I woke up this morning the machine was fully updated to Windows 10 and the documents and other folders were intact. Awesome! The trick you had mentioned of unplugging drive 2 and 3 worked and I was able to upgrade to windows 10. Then I got stupid and decided to try cloning Disk 0 over to the 240gig ssd. Big mistake. As soon as the clone was done I couldn't boot no matter what. I should have just left well enough alone.

Running the startup repair utility from the Windows 10 DVD failed no matter what drives I had plugged in. I even had it try to do a Reset install but it kept saying that the drive was locked. Same thing for either the old 64gig or the new 240gig.

In the end this morning I was ready to shoot the stupid thing when I finally just had Windows 10 to a clean install from the install disk, removing everything (I had backups of all the files). Windows came up, activated as expected, and now I am slowly setting the system back up the way I wanted it.

After all this I did finally receive a post from the answers.microsoft.com forums saying that I should try using the advanced options in troubleshooting area of the startup disk to launch a command prompt and then type:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr

Supposedly that might have fixed it all... Oh well... Too late now...

Microsoft really needs to figure out how to allow people to upgrade to a new version while leaving their personal document folders on a different drive. I remember going through this same thing years ago going from XP to 7. I like the security of having my files on a different drive than my programs and the Windows files.

You had some more fun I see! Fun City isn't it? I've been having some more here too only this time one of the previous storage drives is now an OS drive on the second remote tower I use for trying things out on.

Once I had everything one of the former two storage drives used to backup and store anything worth bothering with regardless of which version is on I tossed it in the fan cooled(Definitely need fan cooling!) and got everything off the first which was still in good working order and restored the 7 Pro image onto the 1gb drive made from the single 500gb that was only running 7 until lately and restored that to the former primary storage drive.

When having that done and installed I then created the second storage/backup partition since the image retained it's original 465gb shape when being restored and split the 1tb drive equally in two! Multiply 465gb twice to see the second partition also the exact same size until....... note this.... I shrunk the 7 Pro primary down a bit not too much however to avoid loss of integrity about 65gb +/- a gb to see an increase for the backup which will serve the two 10 and 7 masters Once I add a new 1tb OS drive in there for 10 that will also be split where I put the system image for 10 on the second partion of the 7 and vice versa or simply plug in a 3rd external drive since only two HDs will fit into the mini tower.

Once the 7 Pro restoration was all set I plugged the 10 drive back in and ended up nuking the first 10 over 7 primary and then moving the 10 clean install primary back to the front of the drive and....... BOOTREC /FIXBOOT, BOOTREC / FIXMBR, BOOTREC / REBUILDBCD all failed! to get 10 back running since the first primary had all the boot files and information there and the mbr couldn't established on the second. Clean install time and good thing for 128gb flash drives! I'm ready to get the files transferred back over from the main to the secondary until the remote connection is up again for remote file transfers. Had tried the automatic Startup Repair tool as well but still ended up as I suspected it would be needing to see a clean install one more time!

neomatter said:

You do have the security of having your data files on a different drive. In XP, 7 and now 10, I have always had my user files located on my data drive separate from the OS/program drive. After clean installs, I just had to go into the User directories and point/move those directories over to the data drive. It's not complicated to do either.

It's one thing to back up all your files onto secondary drives. It's another however custom installing all your programs you run on one version to another drive and then go to put the next newer version and OOPS! Those old Program folders are no longer any good! Program files as far as stand alone installer types you download can easily be stored in folders or sub folders on the local drive as well as backing the same up on the secondaries. Here it would be the upgrade downloads for softwares as well as text tiles for the product keys when the newer versions are ordered and downloaded online to those backed up for circumstances like there where even the OS drive might get replaced.