Question Getting rid of multiple EFI system partitions?

Sep 7, 2021
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I recently bought a new PC with a M.2 SSD but I put HDD and SSD (SATA) from my old PC into the new one.
The win is on M.2 SSD
Yesterday I just got a blue screen out of nowhere, stating 0x000000e and Winload efi cannot be found or missing.
After a little investigation and trying to rebuild the BCD, it turned out the system device cannot be found due to multiple indistinguishable devices. So I just simply unplugged the HDD and SATA SSD then restarted the system. It goes without saying the system just turned on without any problem. Out of curiosity I just plugged them back and tried to start it again and booted up, that is how I am writing this question.

Taking everything into account I think simply due to multiple EFI Partitions sometimes the win can not find the right device.
How and which one I should delete?
Here is my storage setup
https://ibb.co/m9PNLf8

Thanks in advance
 
I see 2 EFI partitions; one on Disk 1 and one on Disk 2.

I assume Disk 2 is your M.2 boot drive, the one with the C partition and that the PC boots well with Disk 1 totally removed.

It also appears that there is nothing on partition D on Disk 1

If all of that is true, I'd think you could delete all partitions on Disk 1, leaving it totally unallocated. You should be able to do that in Disk Management.
 
Sep 7, 2021
5
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I see 2 EFI partitions; one on Disk 1 and one on Disk 2.

I assume Disk 2 is your M.2 boot drive, the one with the C partition and that the PC boots well with Disk 1 totally removed.

It also appears that there is nothing on partition D on Disk 1

If all of that is true, I'd think you could delete all partitions on Disk 1, leaving it totally unallocated. You should be able to do that in Disk Management.

Disk 1 is the SATA SSD.

When I installed the Win, I needed to unplug HDD and SATA SDD because for some reason, I could not install Win on the new M.2 I have a MSI B450 Pro Max motherboard, it kept forcing me to use SATA SSD as primary device.

As an interesting fun fact, when I was trying to rebuild BCD, I constantly kept the reports that the Win is on drive G.
 
I don't see a drive G now in your picture.

Is there anything of value on Disk 1? The D partition appears empty.

You say you bought a PC with an M.2 drive and later you say you "installed the Win". Do you mean that the PC had Windows on it when you bought it and that you later reinstalled Windows?

If the PC boots with Disk 1 totally removed, I don't see why you can't format Disk 1, which would get rid that extra EFI partition.
 

Pimpom

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I have a GPT/EFI SSD with Windows 10 on it and an MBR HDD with Win7. No problem telling which is which in BIOS.

However, when I had a third drive with Win 10 (for testing) a while ago, my BIOS simply gave me a choice of UEFI 1 and UEFI 2 to boot from. It took just a couple of minutes of trial and error to find out which was which. There was no need to unplug any drive.
 
Sep 7, 2021
5
0
10
I don't see a drive G now in your picture.

Is there anything of value on Disk 1? The D partition appears empty.

You say you bought a PC with an M.2 drive and later you say you "installed the Win". Do you mean that the PC had Windows on it when you bought it and that you later reinstalled Windows?

If the PC boots with Disk 1 totally removed, I don't see why you can't format Disk 1, which would get rid that extra EFI partition.


Yes, I bought the PC with M.2 SSD but without OS. I installed the Win on the M.2 SSD