[SOLVED] Computer Refuses to Boot With My New Hard Drive and I'm at a Loss

[LostMyLogins]

I was nearing the capacity on my old 1 TB HDD so I decided to upgrade to a 2TB. I went ahead and dual booted it on my editing PC so I could install Windows 10 and manually move all of my programs and settings onto it, I activated Win10 with an old OEM version I had (meant to do that once it was installed into the old pc) and then swapped the drives.

At that point, I continuously got "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" Same as this. I proceeded to attempt to boot from the new drive and then moved it to the front of the boot order - Nothing. I tried swapping between Legacy + UEFI boot and UEFI boot - no help. I then swapped the old drive in and have the same issue now.

I hooked up both drives to my editing computer with my usb adapter and am able to access the files on both of them so it's not the hardware. I also checked all of the cable connections while they were in there twice, I don't really know how to proceed at this point.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What does this mean?

I went ahead and dual booted it on my editing PC so I could install Windows 10 and manually move all of my programs and settings onto it

Do you mean you installed Windows on the new drive, a clean install, thinking you could transfer stuff from one drive to the other after the installation? Or do you mean you did something else?

First, without cloning, you can't "move all my programs" to the new drive. The only way you are going to get everything onto the new drive, exactly like it is on the old drive, but with more room, is to clone it to the new drive. Most likely what you've done is borked the Windows boot loader.

Remove the new drive and see if the PC will boot with only the only drive connected, if it won't, try powering off, removing the cmos battery for five minutes and then powering back on without the new drive attached of course to see if it will boot like it did originally before you installed the new drive. If it won't, then it's likely you changed some part of the drive in the process.

Actually knowing EXACTLY what you did would go a long way towards being able to help you figure out what went wrong.

And for the record, simply moving everything from one drive to another is not the same as cloning the C: drive as there are multiple partitions, some of which are hidden unless you know where to look for them, that are necessary in order for Windows to be able to boot. Cloning is basically the only realistic way to do that, but you need a fully functional Windows drive that will boot and run before you can do that.

 

[LostMyLogins]

What does this mean?



Do you mean you installed Windows on the new drive, a clean install, thinking you could transfer stuff from one drive to the other after the installation? Or do you mean you did something else?

First, without cloning, you can't "move all my programs" to the new drive. The only way you are going to get everything onto the new drive, exactly like it is on the old drive, but with more room, is to clone it to the new drive. Most likely what you've done is borked the Windows boot loader.

Remove the new drive and see if the PC will boot with only the only drive connected, if it won't, try powering off, removing the cmos battery for five minutes and then powering back on without the new drive attached of course to see if it will boot like it did originally before you installed the new drive. If it won't, then it's likely you changed some part of the drive in the process.

Actually knowing EXACTLY what you did would go a long way towards being able to help you figure out what went wrong.

And for the record, simply moving everything from one drive to another is not the same as cloning the C: drive as there are multiple partitions, some of which are hidden unless you know where to look for them, that are necessary in order for Windows to be able to boot. Cloning is basically the only realistic way to do that, but you need a fully functional Windows drive that will boot and run before you can do that.

I did a clean install of Windows onto the new drive and then manually copied the files I needed from the old pc onto the new hard drive (to clarify, the old pc is the one I'm swapping the hard drives out on, the editing pc is a separate computer I used to put windows on the new drive). I reinstalled all of my required programs on the new drive (and then imported bookmarks/extensions for my browsers). I didn't clone the it since I had a fair amount of old files scattered about that I had no need for and the ones that I actually did need were all concentrated in 3 folders + the desktop. By my terribly worded "settings", I was referring to a couple of non-OS program settings that I could change with the benefit of comparing to the still running old pc before making the switch,

Already removed the new drive and swapped the old drive back in and the old pc isn't booting.

I went ahead and took out the CMOS battery for five minutes and there's no change.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, so do it all again but this time do the clean install with the 2TB drive installed in the machine it's actually going to run in. Installing Windows in one machine and then moving it to another machine, rarely works, and usually only if the hardware in them is very much alike.

What are the FULL hardware specifications for both computers, including CPU, motherboard model, memory, graphics card, etc?

If your old machine is very old, it's also possible that it won't support a 2TB drive, although the fact that you tried using the 1TB drive in the old machine, by itself, without the 2TB drive attached at all, and it wouldn't boot, says that that is probably not the reason.

Does it not POST at all, in other words, nothing on the screen, can't get into BIOS, or is it just not booting to Windows with the old drive installed?

 

[LostMyLogins]

Ok, so do it all again but this time do the clean install with the 2TB drive installed in the machine it's actually going to run in. Installing Windows in one machine and then moving it to another machine, rarely works, and usually only if the hardware in them is very much alike.

What are the FULL hardware specifications for both computers, including CPU, motherboard model, memory, graphics card, etc?

If your old machine is very old, it's also possible that it won't support a 2TB drive, although the fact that you tried using the 1TB drive in the old machine, by itself, without the 2TB drive attached at all, and it wouldn't boot, says that that is probably not the reason.

Does it not POST at all, in other words, nothing on the screen, can't get into BIOS, or is it just not booting to Windows with the old drive installed?

The computers are completely different spec-wise outside of being 64 bit, so that's definitely not helping the situation (one is five years older than the other).

Spoiler: Old PC

Spoiler: Editing PC

It does POST, I'm able to get into BIOS, however, it no longer boots to windows with just the old drive installed now.

 

[LostMyLogins]

Ok, so do it all again but this time do the clean install with the 2TB drive installed in the machine it's actually going to run in. Installing Windows in one machine and then moving it to another machine, rarely works, and usually only if the hardware in them is very much alike.

What are the FULL hardware specifications for both computers, including CPU, motherboard model, memory, graphics card, etc?

If your old machine is very old, it's also possible that it won't support a 2TB drive, although the fact that you tried using the 1TB drive in the old machine, by itself, without the 2TB drive attached at all, and it wouldn't boot, says that that is probably not the reason.

Does it not POST at all, in other words, nothing on the screen, can't get into BIOS, or is it just not booting to Windows with the old drive installed?

I just tried swapping the out the old drive for the new drive in the old pc so I could begin reinstalling Win10 via my flash drive (startup repair was unsuccessful) and received "we couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files." when attempting to install on Partition 2 (Partition 1 being MSR Reserved).

Also, the old drive is now no longer accessible with my usb hard drive adapter, I plugged it into my editing pc again and it does not show up in the drive list anymore.

 

[Darkbreeze]

This, is how you want to go about doing a clean installation of Windows. There may be some VERY small differences in some of the windows and screenshots as the Windows installer version I used for the guide is a few versions back, but essentially it will pretty much all be the same. I need to redo the guide and seemingly do one soon for Windows 11 although I see little point in 11 at this point because the only thing it really offers that 10 doesn't is a slightly different aesthetic and a few utilities that most systems won't be able to run anyhow unless they were built within the last year or two. At least for now.

Yes, the installation of Windows on that Ryzen configuration is almost certainly not going to work on that old FM2 platform. And everything, chipset drivers, storage controller drivers, etc., is going to be different so the boot manager and hardware tables will be completely off.

Sometimes it can work, usually it doesn't.

Read the whole thing. Thing, go back and read it again to make sure you understand every necessary step. 99% of people do NOT install Windows correctly when they do it.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

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