Computer booting from wrong drive

[jasonpiew]

I've got a computer that about a month and a half ago had an HDD cloned to an SSD. For about a month it was fine; then it froze, user rebooted it, and it had a BlInitializeLibrary failed error. After a lot of trial and error and working through forums (I got errors not mentioned) for the issue I finally got it to boot up as long as I had a recovery USB plugged in.

It's done the freeze, with the user continuing to reboot it without telling me first, a few more times. At this point I'm just leaving the recovery USB in all the time, but as of today I'm seeing a new problem: it won't boot with the drive it's supposed to every time. Sometimes it boots from the USB recovery drive (as it should via BIOS). Sometimes it boots from the HDD (still present for backing up files to, has a fresh install of Windows 10 on it; that was part of the process that led to booting up properly). Sometimes in BIOS it has the HDD and SSD switched in order; sometimes it has one of the drives missing and the recovery USB listed in addition to "USB drives". This computer has an option where instead of going to the BIOS you can specifically select the boot device you wish to use, and even selecting the SSD as the boot drive twice resulted in the HDD being the boot drive; the third time was the charm and it booted to the SSD as it was supposed to.

In looking over similar postings, it looks like it could be a few things; the battery might be failing on the motherboard, disabling UEFI might fix it, or the motherboard could be bad. Any thoughts? I've come here for years to gain knowledge from you guys, this is the first time I've been unable to find an existing solution.

 

[USAFRet]

This is what happens when you clone, and leave the old OS on the old drive, still in the system.
Confusion.

Remove/disconnect the old drive. Have only the SSD connected.
Does it boot up?

If not...boot from your OS install disk, and see what happens when you try the Repair function.

 

[jasonpiew]

This is what happens when you clone, and leave the old OS on the old drive, still in the system.
Confusion.

Remove/disconnect the old drive. Have only the SSD connected.
Does it boot up?

If not...boot from your OS install disk, and see what happens when you try the Repair function.

I expected confusion on the computer's part because I had to leave it in the hands of the user and leave while it was cloning (I get sent to multiple locations). Afterwards, however, it worked fine for a full month without any issues, so I operated under the assumption that there were no latent issues from it.

The old HDD has been reformatted completely; would it still cause problems to leave it hooked up?

As for booting from the OS install disk, I assume you mean the USB recovery drive I created, because I came to this company with the existing computer already having been mucked about with by others. I'm fairly certain the recovery drive won't work since it was upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 long before I showed up.

 

[USAFRet]

This is what happens when you clone, and leave the old OS on the old drive, still in the system.
Confusion.

Remove/disconnect the old drive. Have only the SSD connected.
Does it boot up?

If not...boot from your OS install disk, and see what happens when you try the Repair function.

I expected confusion on the computer's part because I had to leave it in the hands of the user and leave while it was cloning (I get sent to multiple locations). Afterwards, however, it worked fine for a full month without any issues, so I operated under the assumption that there were no latent issues from it.

The old HDD has been reformatted completely; would it still cause problems to leave it hooked up?

As for booting from the OS install disk, I assume you mean the USB recovery drive I created, because I came to this company with the existing computer already having been mucked about with by others. I'm fairly certain the recovery drive won't work since it was upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 long before I showed up.

"reformatted completely" ?
Does this include ALL the original partitions? Or just format f the visible drive letter space?

Physical disconnect, to be 100% sure it boots properly from the SSD alone.
That is a critical step left off of most cloning instructions.
At the end of the process, you must power off, disconnect the old drive, and allow teh system to boot from tyeh new drive on its own.
I'm assuming that didn't happen.


By booting from the OS install disk...no, not the "recovery" thing it came with.
Any Win 10 install disk will work for this.

 

[jasonpiew]

This is what happens when you clone, and leave the old OS on the old drive, still in the system.
Confusion.

Remove/disconnect the old drive. Have only the SSD connected.
Does it boot up?

If not...boot from your OS install disk, and see what happens when you try the Repair function.

I expected confusion on the computer's part because I had to leave it in the hands of the user and leave while it was cloning (I get sent to multiple locations). Afterwards, however, it worked fine for a full month without any issues, so I operated under the assumption that there were no latent issues from it.

The old HDD has been reformatted completely; would it still cause problems to leave it hooked up?

As for booting from the OS install disk, I assume you mean the USB recovery drive I created, because I came to this company with the existing computer already having been mucked about with by others. I'm fairly certain the recovery drive won't work since it was upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 long before I showed up.

"reformatted completely" ?
Does this include ALL the original partitions? Or just format f the visible drive letter space?

Physical disconnect, to be 100% sure it boots properly from the SSD alone.
That is a critical step left off of most cloning instructions.
At the end of the process, you must power off, disconnect the old drive, and allow teh system to boot from tyeh new drive on its own.
I'm assuming that didn't happen.


By booting from the OS install disk...no, not the "recovery" thing it came with.
Any Win 10 install disk will work for this.

I removed all partitions and then formatted the drive as a single partitioned drive to install from because I had forgotten that since Windows 7 Microsoft made it so the installation software for the OS won't work with more than one drive plugged in; partitions on the SSD were interfering with the install to the HDD, and to make sure it wasn't the partitions on the HDD I removed them all first (this was the first time I actually used a USB boot drive to reinstall an OS, prior to this I always did a full clean install, but I'm under someone else's orders now).

No, it was not booted without the HDD. You're correct it wasn't in the instructions, and as soon as it was determined the cloning had reported as successful I was sent to do other tasks; I wasn't even allowed to, as I wanted, ensure the boot order was even correct.

Booting from a USB boot drive and going to try Repair, in any method I try, including just looking for Restore points I manually created when I got it back up and running the first time (someone had turned them off, and the user insists he always has them on) fails. It can't find Restore points. It encounters unexplained errors when trying to Repair, Refresh, or any other advanced troubleshooting option other than Shut Down, Restart, or Command Line.

Got interrupted even from writing this with a two hour task that anyone could've done, but fixing this computer is apparently low priority. Not as low as hunting down the Trojans our network firewall keeps reporting are there, though. I've been told to ignore the reports.

I'll try booting off just the SSD the next time it fails to boot. I've finally got the tools here to try this. There seem to be two issues here, though; one is the problem getting it to boot up, and the other is the problem causing it to freeze and need restarting. I think the SSD itself is largely the cause of the latter. It and Windows Power Management, anyway, from my research into it. If I can take care of that, I won't have to worry as much about the boot issue because it's usually left running for weeks at a time. But I need to get it to boot to fix that. >.<

EDIT: I've tried booting with just the SSD. I get a 0xc00000e error, "A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed." At this point the only way the computer will boot up is via the old HDD, and inside the OS it is completely unable to detect the SSD. If I try to enter System Recovery while the SSD is attached, it never loads, and after a couple minutes the computer just shuts down (does that with the error above, too). If I have the USB boot drive in I'm unable to access the BIOS or anything else; it ignores my commands and boots to Windows Setup.

 

[USAFRet]

Well, I don't what to tell in regards to this broken system, other than a full wipe and reinstall.

For future cloning reference...

Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive
Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe as necessary.
Delete the 450MB Recovery Partition, here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4f1b84ac-b193-40e3-943a-f45d52e23685/cant-delete-extra-healthy-recovery-partitions-and-healthy-efi-system-partition?forum=w8itproinstall
-----------------------------

 

[jasonpiew]

Yeah, that's what I wound up doing. Fortunately I'd backed all the data up to the other disk before it went crazy again.