Mouse doesn't work in BIOS, can't change boot order

[leachyboy77]

Just purchased a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD to become my new C: drive. I've already got a 250GB 840 Evo as my current C: drive, but that's out of room, so I want the 500GB to replace it (I still want to use both, just have the 500GB as the main drive). I installed the drive correctly, initialized and formatted it, and used Samsung Magician to clone everything over. The hard drive is working as it should be, I can read and write data to and from the drive as it is. However, the 250GB wasn't cleared (as the software said it would be after the cloning process) and is still the boot drive. I went into the BIOS by pressing delete during startup (it's a Gigabyte motherboard), and in the bottom right corner I can see the boot order for all my drives. The 500GB is third in the list, and I want it to be first.


For some reason, my mouse won't work in the BIOS. At first I thought it was because it was a wireless mouse, so I looked around the house for a wired one, but that didn't work either. I can still navigate the BIOS menus with the keyboard and edit options that are in a drop-down list format, but this boot order list is in a horizontal orientation with a scroll bar at the bottom. No matter what key combination I use, I can't figure out how to move the drive to the front of the boot order. Can anyone help me out? It's right in front of me, and if my mouse worked in the BIOS, I'm sure I could take care of this in five seconds, but this is proving to be a problem.

 

[AppleGwava]

Maybe you can remove the 250gb ssd,that should cause it to change to the 500gb ssd

 

[leachyboy77]

Maybe you can remove the 250gb ssd,that should cause it to change to the 500gb ssd

My Seagate 1TB HDD is second on the boot order list. Would removing the 250GB SSD cause it to try and boot from the hard drive, or would it skip to the 500GB SSD since that's the one that has the OS on it? Also, would I be able to reconnect the 250GB SSD afterwards and have the boot drive still be the 500GB, or would it revert somehow?

 

[apk24]

You should still be able to navigate the bios using keyboard alone. I'd look in your MB manual for details. Probably want to switch from easy mode to advanced mode, or whatever it may be called. Generally speaking, that's more keyboard friendly. Then you can fix boot order, and figure out why the mouse won't work. (Maybe something about PS2 or PS2 emulation is the issue, there's usually some kind of option that sounds like that).

 

[leachyboy77]

You should still be able to navigate the bios using keyboard alone. I'd look in your MB manual for details. Probably want to switch from easy mode to advanced mode, or whatever it may be called. Generally speaking, that's more keyboard friendly. Then you can fix boot order, and figure out why the mouse won't work. (Maybe something about PS2 or PS2 emulation is the issue, there's usually some kind of option that sounds like that).

So I was able to go into "Classic" mode by pressing F2 which just made the UI simpler and reduced the amount of options I had. It changed the format of the boot order menu into something that I could manipulate with the keyboard, so I was able to change it so that the 500GB was my new boot drive.

There's a new problem now, however. When I attempt to boot from that drive, it says Windows isn't able to boot because "some startup files might be missing." I cloned over my entire drive, so I don't see how certain files might be missing. It then tells me to put my Windows installation CD in and boot from there to fix the issue. I do that, and I go into Advanced Options. I see an option that says Startup Repair, so I try that. Nothing is fixed. There are a few more options in the Refresh PC section, but they involve restoring from a restore point. Would that work, seeing as right now my computer only works off of the first 250GB drive?

 

[leachyboy77]

I'm now having issues even using the Refresh PC option. It tells me that the drive where Windows is installed is locked, and to unlock the drive and try again. I don't even think I know what this means. I don't understand how the 500GB drive doesn't have all of the files necessary to run Windows properly if all the data was cloned properly.

 

[apk24]

Is the old drive still plugged in? Try unplugging it and see what happens. Maybe you accidentally set some read only or some such setting when you changed the boot order?

Overall, Windows gets finicky when you try to clone over a windows install to a new disk. In my experience it almost never works, and when it does, it never goes smoothly. It's especially worse when the disks are of different sizes. My recommendation is boot using the old drive, do a full system backup (using the windows built in option) onto a third drive, do a fresh install of windows on your new drive, and system restore onto there. Even then, no guarantees, but that's always had the best chance of working for me.

 

[leachyboy77]

Is the old drive still plugged in? Try unplugging it and see what happens. Maybe you accidentally set some read only or some such setting when you changed the boot order?

Overall, Windows gets finicky when you try to clone over a windows install to a new disk. In my experience it almost never works, and when it does, it never goes smoothly. It's especially worse when the disks are of different sizes. My recommendation is boot using the old drive, do a full system backup (using the windows built in option) onto a third drive, do a fresh install of windows on your new drive, and system restore onto there. Even then, no guarantees, but that's always had the best chance of working for me.

Where would I go for this full system backup? From what I've been able to find searching around the internet, the File History function of Windows 8 isn't exactly a complete backup tool, but I guess I'll go with that for now.

Currently I've got the 250GB C: drive and a 1TB HDD for storage that are both full. I've got a 1TB external drive with enough free space to fit all the content of the 250GB drive, but it's not formatted with NTFS, so this File History program is saying it can't be used for a backup. It's currently in exFAT because I needed compatibility with Macs (I'm an aspiring audio engineer, so I need to go back and forth with Pro Tools), and I've got files on there that I really don't have any space for anywhere else, but I need to keep them.

ALSO, it's not letting me do a fresh install of Windows on the new drive. At first it was an MBR disk, and it told me that it had to be installed on a GPT disk, so I had to clear the initialization and reinitialize it as a GPT disk. After doing that and getting to where it asked me where I wanted to install Windows, it said the following: "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files." I don't understand this, it's a completely empty drive that was initialized in the way it wanted it to be, and it still won't install. I feel like as soon as I get Windows installed here, I can possibly use the Samsung Magician software to just move all the other files over from the original 250GB drive and take it from there, but I can't even get a fresh install of Windows on the brand new drive.

 

[apk24]

The option is called system backup and restore, easiest way to find it is through the control panel, not the settings app. I don't currently have a win8 machine to check, but on win10, it's at "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore (Windows 7)". You'll still need an ntfs partition that's ~5-15gb bigger than your current os drive.

I'm assuming that you used something like partition wizard on windows or gparted on linux to delete everything on the 500GB drive and initialized the disk to GPT. That's what I usually do, so that seems fine. I've had windows arbitrarily refuse to install on hdds before, but never had an issue with an ssd or a retail disk from a reputable manufacturer.

The computer still boots fine on the old disk, right? How are you reinstalling windows? Are you using a recovery partition? Do you have a USB stick/disk with windows on it? Only thing I can think of is that if you're using a recovery partition or similar, you'll see those types of issues. The recovery media method generally works better.

 

[leachyboy77]

I had my original Windows 8.1 installation disk that I was using. To clear the disk's initialization, I was using the "clear" command in the "diskpart" section of Command Prompt. You can initialize it through there as well, but I used Disk Management instead just because it's a recognizable interface.

I think what I'm going to explore now is using a USB drive and using the Windows Media Creation tool to turn it into a bootable installation drive for Windows 10 and install a fresh version of Windows 10 on the 500GB drive. I had tried earlier this year to get the free upgrade from 8.1, but it said a partition reserved for the OS that it needed to use was full (somehow) so I couldn't upgrade. Hopefully I can get in contact with someone at Microsoft and explain that situation, and maybe get them to give me a key for my troubles. But until then, I'm going with this method, and I guess I can drag some files across from the old 250GB drive. Either that, or maybe the Samsung Magician software will be able to help me out because in that case, I won't need the OS files, just all of my installed programs. I am a bit worried though that it might copy over the Windows 8.1 files and mess up the Windows 10 installation.