My SSD with Win10 showing as EFI System Partition

[Victor_G]

Hi!

So this ssd has Win10 installed but after I removed the HDD it stopped booting. Have tried a ton of different instructions on how to fix, but with no success. I just noticed that the SSD drive with win 10 partition is displaying as EFI System partition. This is not good is it?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you post screenshot from Disk Management?

 

[Victor_G]

Hi, here is the screenshot,

its the 238 GB partition on Disk 1. On top of the 128 MB partition used to be MSR partition (did not show in the Disk Management, only showed in Diskpart) - but i formatted it into FAT32 while hoping that would help to load boot info there. Originally Disk Management showed one big EFI system partiotion.

http://www.imagehosting.cz/?v=capturjtj.jpg

 

[SkyNetRising]

Yes - that is wrong.
EFI System partition is located on your 1TB HDD (260mb partition).

Your SSD should contain small EFI system partition with bootloader (100-300mb), some recovery partitions and a big OS partition.
Did you install windows 10, while HDD was connected?

I'd backup your user data from SSD, clean it and reinstall windows 10 (with HDD disconnected).

 

[Victor_G]

Yes - that is wrong.
EFI System partition is located on your 1TB HDD (260mb partition).

Your SSD should contain small EFI system partition with bootloader (100-300mb), some recovery partitions and a big OS partition.
Did you install windows 10, while HDD was connected?

I'd backup your user data from SSD, clean it and reinstall windows 10 (with HDD disconnected).

First of all thank you so much for help! You are right, I had installed Win10 on ssd while HDD was in the laptop.

I would follow your advise but don't k ow how to access user data from SSD to backup. Windows says Access Denied. Any idea?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Then boot into windows 10 to access your user data.

 

[Victor_G]

Yes, that's what I did, booted in Win 10 but the efi disk has no letter attached. When u attach a letter to it and want to open the disk, windows says access denied. Is there any software to access data from efi disk?

 

[SkyNetRising]

You can try changing partition type with diskpart set id command.

Change 238GB partition to basic data partition.
Commands would be:

• diskpart
  list disk
  select disk x (select SSD - probably disk 1)
  list partition
  select partition y (select 238GB EFI sys partition - probably partition 2)
  set id=edb0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 override
  exit

 

[Victor_G]

Wow, that's something new for me! I will definitely try it tonight and come back to you with the result mate!

 

[Victor_G]

Hi! I am at home and have done what you said.

Here is what i get in diskpart:
http://www.imagehosting.cz/?v=capturmem.jpg
as you can see, in the list of partitions its type is unknown and there is no volume on this partition. Why is that?

And here is how the Disk Management in Windows sees it:
http://www.imagehosting.cz/?v=capturmnm.jpg
cannot assign a letter....

So where to from here?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Probably there was some spelling error in set id command. It must be entered precisely.
Partition 1 on SSD must be of type "Reserved" and hidden
e3c9e316-0b5c-4db8-817d-f92df00215ae

Partition 2 on SSD must be of type "Primary"
ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7

Execute this and post screenshot.

• select disk 1
  select partition 1
  remove letter=F
  set id=e3c9e316-0b5c-4db8-817d-f92df00215ae
  detail partition
  select partition 2
  set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7
  detail partition

 

[Victor_G]

Deae SkyNetRising,

I cant thank you enough. Thanks for sticking with me. It finally worked. It did. Might have been a typo indeed, makes me feel stupid, but my important data are now saved! Really this was big. Thumbs up!

Victor