[SOLVED] Bootmgr missing unless empty drive is connected

[Cameron231099]

Hey. Was cleaning my PC due to unsatisfactory CPU temps. Also did some cable management. Couldn't get the system to boot due to no Bootmgr, even though I have 3 installs of windows across 4 drives as redundancy. Couldn't boot to any of the drives, even when only one was plugged in. Seemingly not a sata issue, since my main windows drive is an NVME SSD, so no issues with driver numbers being mixed up. Took a few hours, but finally got the system to boot, with all OSs being picked up only when a completely empty SSD was plugged into the system that I had just removed as it was unused. (

https://imgur.com/TmXV97O

View: https://i.imgur.com/TmXV97O.png
).

Any ideas what could be causing this? Thanks.

 

[Colif]

you are looking in the wrong place
open disk management
you will find an unlabelled partition on that drive that PC is using to boot the other drives. was it in PC when you installed onto others? Win 10 just added their boot info to its partition each time.

 

[Cameron231099]

Ah, I see, so there's an single partition responsible for storing this sort of information?

https://imgur.com/0trUtH6

View: https://i.imgur.com/0trUtH6.png

There's a 100mb partition on that otherwise empty SSD, I guess that 'Backup Reserve' in the SSD (E Disk 1 (120GB) is storing that info, which as the drive I removed. Any ways to shift this data over to my main drive?

 

[TerryLaze]

Any ways to shift this data over to my main drive?

Have only the drive that doesn't boot in the system and boot up the windows installation usb/dvd and let it repair the boot, it might need to do that a few times.

Another way is from within windows using easybcd, you should look up a guide if you go that way.

 

[Cameron231099]

Have only the drive that doesn't boot in the system and boot up the windows installation usb/dvd and let it repair the boot, it might need to do that a few times.

Another way is from within windows using easybcd, you should look up a guide if you go that way.

The original OS was win7, upgraded to 8, 8.1 then 10, so no install CD here 😔
I'll check out easybcd tho, cheers.

 

[Colif]

Download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB