Issues loading windows, now I have 2 OS's

[omar.ghosn]

Hello,
I have had an odd situation, let me break it down:
1) I had a perfectly functioning Windows PC (installed on SSD)
2) I had a GPU that I may have bricked as I had modded the bios
3) Plugged it into the PC and booted...it worked, I installed the AMD drivers for it and restarted
4) It went into a Repair loop
5) I removed it and plugged into IGD
6) Still, Repair loop...repair and recover would not work
7) Tried installation disk...to repair, no luck
8) Finally, I just installed a new version of windows on the HDD to try and recover some important data
9) That worked and booted up
10) Oddest thing now
I have partitions C: (has boot, crash dump) and E: (looks like the recovered OS) on the HDD
I have drive D: (original OS on SSD, system partition)

Not sure what to do...I just want the original installation that resides on D:
Any ideas?

 

[CountMike]

You'd have to show me a screen shot of your Disk Management to be certain but now you have same windows on both, SSD and HDD and are actually booted from HDD. Partition E: maybe just one of system partitions with a letter wrongly assigned to it.
If you change in BIOS BOOT order to SSD, what happens ? Also may have to try without HDD connected.

 

[CoDrift]

Hello,
I have had an odd situation, let me break it down:
1) I had a perfectly functioning Windows PC (installed on SSD)
2) I had a GPU that I may have bricked as I had modded the bios
3) Plugged it into the PC and booted...it worked, I installed the AMD drivers for it and restarted
4) It went into a Repair loop
5) I removed it and plugged into IGD
6) Still, Repair loop...repair and recover would not work
7) Tried installation disk...to repair, no luck
8) Finally, I just installed a new version of windows on the HDD to try and recover some important data
9) That worked and booted up
10) Oddest thing now
I have partitions C: (has boot, crash dump) and E: (looks like the recovered OS) on the HDD
I have drive D: (original OS on SSD, system partition)

Not sure what to do...I just want the original installation that resides on D:
Any ideas?

Insert windows installation disk, and go to that point where you manage you're drives, and delete and recreate the drive with the second OS on it (As it doesn't contain any data and you only installed to recover the data).
That should remove the second unwanted OS. :d

 

[omar.ghosn]

You'd have to show me a screen shot of your Disk Management to be certain but now you have same windows on both, SSD and HDD and are actually booted from HDD. Partition E: maybe just one of system partitions with a letter wrongly assigned to it.
If you change in BIOS BOOT order to SSD, what happens ? Also may have to try without HDD connected.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you - my PC was at work and we had a long weekend
I have attached an image

E: seems to be a restored version (its a copy but not as up to date)
C: seems to be the new one that I had tried to install thinking it would update but it installed a whole new version
D: is the original on the SSD

I'm so confused by the different terms Boot, System, Active, etc...
And the original, on D, is stuck in an endless repair loop

 

[omar.ghosn]

Hello,
I have had an odd situation, let me break it down:
1) I had a perfectly functioning Windows PC (installed on SSD)
2) I had a GPU that I may have bricked as I had modded the bios
3) Plugged it into the PC and booted...it worked, I installed the AMD drivers for it and restarted
4) It went into a Repair loop
5) I removed it and plugged into IGD
6) Still, Repair loop...repair and recover would not work
7) Tried installation disk...to repair, no luck
8) Finally, I just installed a new version of windows on the HDD to try and recover some important data
9) That worked and booted up
10) Oddest thing now
I have partitions C: (has boot, crash dump) and E: (looks like the recovered OS) on the HDD
I have drive D: (original OS on SSD, system partition)

Not sure what to do...I just want the original installation that resides on D:
Any ideas?

Insert windows installation disk, and go to that point where you manage you're drives, and delete and recreate the drive with the second OS on it (As it doesn't contain any data and you only installed to recover the data).
That should remove the second unwanted OS. :d

Haha, thats actually what got me to this point...I had my drive stuck in repair loop, used the installation disk and tried to repair/restore and ended up here. I can boot into both...botting into the original is still the problem as it is stuck in teh repair loop

 

[omar.ghosn]

So an update, I finally got it to break out of the repair loop...I followed steps to copy the RegBack files back into the Config folder in System32. This did it. Now I just have to get rid of that second OS...
1) Can I delete that partition?
2) When I access the original OS in command prompt, it was actually C:

 

[CountMike]

So, you are booting from Disk0 (SSD) ? Disk/partition with windows on it and booted from is always C:
Now before you start cleaning other disks, disconnect/disable all but SSD and try booting like that. It's possible (by bad stroke of luck) for windows to mix partitions/disks up and have part of windows on one while actually running from another disk. This way you can be sure it's running properly.
As for ACTIVE and PRIMARY partitions, only disk(s) with OS on it should have them. Others should be like your (now) F: disk. LOGICAL.

 

[omar.ghosn]

Cool, thanks, its all well and good now. What happened I'm assuming is that when I booted into the SSD OS (original) and went into command prompt, it named its system partition to C:
Wow that was fun, thanks for helping me work this out

 

[CountMike]

No problem.