Can't get UEFI drive to boot - help

thornev said:

SIW2 - Understood. The current task is to get the new drive to be able to boot into either the legacy or the UEFI drives. That way I can decide how to populate the new Windows partition and make it my go-to every day.

In that case you would want an entry in the bcd on the new disk pointing at the os partition on the old disk and it needs winload.exe as the loader.

You seem to now have two entries that are the same.

NavyLCDR said:

And another interesting note - when booted into Windows, one of the entries in the BCD should change to {current}. That does not happen on your system.

I'm wondering if the issue is that I haven't yet installed Windows on the new Windows partition. That or maybe the last Loader entry needs more editing, but I don't know what.

I think the best course of action at this point is to:

1. Backup your current Windows installation to an image file using Macrium Reflect Free - store the image on your second, new SSD.

2. Do a repair install using an ISO file created with Microsoft's Media Creation Tool.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

3. After the repair install, do some system checks and cleanup with dism, sfc, and disk cleanup commands.

Then see if the current Windows 10 install starts behaving normally. Right now the current Windows 10 install is not behaving normally.

thornev said:

I'm wondering if the issue is that I haven't yet installed Windows on the new Windows partition. That or maybe the last Loader entry needs more editing, but I don't know what.

But you have installed Windows on the new Windows partition. You claimed earlier that you had booted into it and created a user account.

SIW2 said:

In that case you would want an entry in the efi bcd on the new disk pointing at the os partition on the old disk and it needs winload.exe as the loader.

That is already done, SIW2. Somehow my posts aren't getting displayed in your browser. Or maybe you're not seeing the edits I do to them.

- - - Updated - - -

NavyLCDR said:

But you have installed Windows on the Windows partition. You claimed earlier that you had booted into it and created a user account.

I don't recall saying that, Navy. No, I have not yet gone through the Windows installation on the EFI Windows partition. I can boot to get the installation screen, but I have always just gone into a command window to do various tasks.

Then, yes, @thornev, you need to boot into the EFI SSD, into the Windows that is installed there and finish setup. Create an account, make sure it is working. We need to make sure everything is good with that new SSD and booting into UEFI mode from it.

The reason I've been hesitant to complete the install is that I was worried that doing so would prevent my migrating the apps from the legacy Windows. I guess it's time I complete the install in order to move forward.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, going to install now.

thornev said:

The reason I've been hesitant to complete the install is that I was worried that doing so would prevent my migrating the apps from the legacy Windows. I guess it's time I complete the install in order to move forward.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, going to install now.

Once we get the new Windows up and running and booted into, we can try a bcdboot command from there to add the legacy Windows 10 as a boot menu item to the EFI BCD.

what the hey?! Windows says I can't install to a gpt partition style! I chose custom install. Maybe I have to choose upgrade install?

- - - Updated - - -

I think Windows was trying to install from my USB drive that Windows Media Creation tool was used to create. I removed it and now when I boot the EFI drive, I get taken to the legacy Windows ! So how in the world am I supposed to install Windows on the EFI Windows partition?!

thornev said:

what the hey?! Windows says I can't install to a gpt partition style! I chose custom install. Maybe I have to choose upgrade install?

I am really confused here. Go back and look at posts 101, 102 and 103. In those three posts, you supposedly, if the directions were followed, did a manual install of Windows 10 Pro edition to the new SSD in EFI mode. If you used an ISO file or USB flash drive created with the Microsoft Media Creation Tool and applied the image from the mounted ISO file or from the USB flash drive, then you should have ended up with a clean install of Windows 10 to the new SSD and you would not have booted into Windows setup. You would have booted into the Windows 10 OOBE screen:



So what happened? Which instructions in posts 101 and 102 did you not follow as written? Did you create an ISO file or USB flash drive with the media creation tool? Did you mount the ISO file or plug in the USB flash drive? Did you not apply index 6 from install.esd from the mounted ISO file or from the USB flash drive? Do you still have a flash drive plugged into the computer?