Install of Windows 10 from ISO image to new hard drive

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J

jk1975a

Commendable
Nov 2, 2016
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I was trying to replace a hard drive in my Dell XPS 8500. The original hard drive was failing, but still working intermittently. It was running Windows 10, free upgraded from Windows 8.1, for which I never made the installation/recovery disk. So after a lot of research I figured out I could download the Windows 10 ISO. I did so, downloading it to a USB drive. I also installed a new internal hard drive, leaving the old hard drive in place. I used Windows 10 disk management, leaving it as one single partition, and assigned drive letter D. I then used the Windows 10 ISO on the USB drive to install Windows 10 to the new drive. I set the boot sequence to boot from the new drive.

I left things running overnight to get my massive dropbox synced to the new drive.

All seemed fine until this morning when I looked and saw a DOS-type screen again saying there was no boot device. I was able to reboot and I guess things seem OK for the moment, but there's no reason that I can think of that there should have been a boot failure from the new drive. So my question: Is it possible the old drive is still engaged in some way that would cause the whole system to fail? There's no "disable" option in the device manager for this drive, making me think it's still necessary even though I intended to render it unnecessary by installing to the new drive. I guess I could go back into the computer and unplug the old drive and see what happens, but asking first seemed the prudent thing to do.

One other point, not sure if it's relevant: Even though I assigned the new drive letter D, the new drive is now (after Windows installation) showing up as drive letter C. But "C" is definitely the new drive, based on drive size numbers.

I've spent three days getting to this point. I'm not a computer guy. Any insights appreciated.
 
Solution
Colif
When you do a fresh install of win 10 it will ask you at step 13 of this guide to delete all the partitions on the hdd anyway so any of the steps mentioned above are a waste of time. Once there is only unallocated space on the drive, you click next and win 10 will create 4 GPT partitions on the drive and install windows

So in reality all the steps of that post I made above are a waste of time but if it lets you install I am not going to argue.

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windows will always call the drive it is booted to as "c:" so that's not an issue. perfectly normal.

as for it booting, i'd say the old drive is the issue. the boot partition is on that drive and not the new one and now you are dual booting (i assume you are getting a dual boot screen the way you did it) with the second drive as the default OS to boot to. so if the old drive fails to boot, which was the case as you stated "intermittently", then that would prevent the system from seeing the boot partition to know to boot to the new drive.

you should remove the old drive completely since you don't need it and it is causing issues. you should be able to remove it and run the repair install from your usb drive to get the boot partition installed to the new drive. here is a tutorial for that process which is pretty simple. https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/
 
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I've had issues like this in the past. I think If I remember correctly when it happened to me, I just ended up disconnecting the secondary drive so that only the new OS drive was present, then I reinstalled Windows and assigned it with letter C:

Then after I had the new OS installed and all running correctly. I re-attached the secondary drive and let Windows auto-assign it a letter.

However, you may be able to fix your issue by making sure the new drive's partition is active.

You can find a guide on how to do this with various methods HERE

Good luck!
 
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I've had issues like this in the past. I think If I remember correctly when it happened to me, I just ended up disconnecting the secondary drive so that only the new OS drive was present, then I reinstalled Windows and assigned it with letter C:

Then after I had the new OS installed and all running correctly. I re-attached the secondary drive and let Windows auto-assign it a letter.

However, you may be able to fix your issue by making sure the new drive's partition is active.

You can find a guide on how to do this with various methods HERE

Good luck!
 
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can you show us a screen shot of disk management?

Its possible win 10 put the boot sector on the old drive. It has a habit of doing that sort of thing if given 2 drives to install too. The simplest answer might be to remove all hard drives except C and fresh install win 10 on to it. Once you know it reboots without other drive in pc, then reattach the old drive again. Depending on what Disk Management shows, you might be okay from here or you may need to delete a small partition on the old drive.

I don't suppose you can copy that dropbox location to another drive after the fact?
 
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yup boot partition is on old drive that is messing up. first thing i'd do is disconnect the old drive and run the repair install from the usb i linked above. should put the boot partition on the new drive and then you can do whatever with the old one. first thing would be to delete the boot partition from that drive if you plan on trying to keep using it.
 
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Sorry to be slow here, but why do you think that? The disk management screen shot shows "boot" on the new WD drive, which is the one I just installed. ("C," "Disk 1")

 
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The EFI partition is on the old drive still, and you need to either do a repair install as Math Geek suggested on drive 1 and need to delete all the partitions on disk 0. I would use http://www.dban.org/ to wipe the old drive and then just make 1 partition on drive once you put it back in after you fix drive 1. The order of disks will change then too.

I let Math Geek help, im just too slow :)
 
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all those small partitions on the disk 0 (old hdd) are the ones that need to be on the new drive. it says "boot" on new one but that refers to the fact that the system knows it is a bootable drive and not that there is a boot partition present. the 350 mb partition i believe is the boot one it needs to add. though it will also add the recovery one if i recall right.

i have a triple boot system and there are a dozen of these small partitions on the main hdd. think it is 2 per drive that are created plus the single master boot record.

simple fix, the repair install leaves everything in place that you just did for the new drive. so you won't be reinstalling anything. but you do need to remove/unplug the old drive so that the repair install realizes it is missing the boot partition and puts it back on the new drive.
 
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not all, actually, he has 3 recovery drives, that is a sign of win 8.1 install, win 10 and then the anniversary edition. If you never fresh install 10, wonder how many recovery partitions it can create in that time :)

win 10 only makes 4 partitions, he has about 7.
 
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Nice folks here. Thanks for your time. I guess I am just concerned after two days of stress-filled attempts to get up and running again, I'm about to create new problems. Wish me luck. And, again, thanks.
 
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I'm sorry for my slowness but I want to be sure of the steps before I do anything.

Power down, then disconnect the original bad drive? And boot from the USB? Or boot from the new hard drive? And the linked instructions said to double lick the ISO to mount it. Can you just go step by step for me on that?
 
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thanks for clarifying. that's what i meant. a few of those small partitions are what indicate the boot partition and other needed ones for win 10. but yah not all will be created. only a couple.

good luck, but leaving the old hdd in that has been having issues is a sure way to create more problems for yourself. do yourself a favor and send that one to the trashheap unless it is under warranty and can be replaced. worth looking into as it is not that old of a drive overall. some companies offer some nice multi-year warranties.
 
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Back one more time to repeat a previous post.

If you would, I need a step by step on the solution.
1. Power down.
2. Detach old drive.
3. Put USB with ISO in drive.
4. Try to boot.
etc.

I'm still confused about how to combine this with the linked instructions, which say to double click the ISO and that it only works from within windows. Can somebody just lay out the steps?
 
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omg, you are so right. i keep forgetting the repair install is not an option with win 10. it's been there since forever and it's just a habit to go to it for solutions. not sure why they removed it but that is something they need to put back.

so i guess it is a fresh install as the solution after all 🙁

i'll get it into my head eventually that this is not an option anymore unless you can boot into win 10. stupid since it was used to fix boot issues mostly and now to get ot the option you have to be able to boot the system......
 
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You can use the win 10 installer to boot into repair options and try to fix boot from there. Its only way now that F8 doesn't open safe mode unless you change it before hand. Its not perfect, often the start up settings option isn't there if you boot from USB, seems only to appear if you can get as far as the login screen, and then go to advanced startup via holding shift down when you click power button/reset
 
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This post seems to offer another solution, but I am not smart enough to apply it to my circumstances.

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/how-to-make-a-hard-drive-bootable-373491/
 
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well, you can't do that exactly as win 10 has different menus but you can give startup repair a try
take old hdd out as running this won't solve anything with it in pc
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose start up repair - this will scan PC and maybe fix this - will ask for logon info
 
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that's basically what i suggested but it only applies to win 7 and not win 10. that's the missing feature i was thinking of. used to just be an option on the widnows disk to repair start-up. it would check the drive and see what windows installs are there and then create the boot files needed to boot the system. was simple and effective most of the time.

must be why MS took it out since it just worked too well to leave alone
 
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OK I really am going to lose my mind over this.

I disconnected old hard drive and attempted to boot from USB ISO.

I first chose "Startup Repair." It said: "startup repair couldn't repair your PC."

There's aso an option for UEFI Firmware Settings. That takes me to screen I've seen many times in this ordeal, which allows me to change boot order, among other things. Current boot order: 1. UEFI Kingston (the USB drive). 2. Internal HDD Devices. 3. Internal ODD Devices. I assumed there was nothing useful to be done here and exited.

I then said "Screw it, I'll just do a new install and lose the hours I spent loading dropbox, apps, etc."

But now when I try to do a fresh install on the new drive (with the old drive disconnected), I get "We couldn't create a new partition of locate an existing one."

Anybody?

 
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boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type DISKPART.

Type LIST DISK and identify your HDD disk number (from 0 to n disks).

Type SELECT DISK whatever disk number you have.

Type CLEAN.

Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY.

Type ACTIVE.

Type FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK.

Type ASSIGN.

Type EXIT twice (one to get out of DiskPart, the other to exit the command line tool).
Click to expand...

http://www.disk-partition.com/articles/we-cannot-create-a-new-partition-1004.html

all the steps after clean will be undone by the actual install but we might as well do them
 
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