Removing windows 10 technical preview

[excaliburr]

I may have gotten myself into some trouble with this one. A while back I put windows 10 technical preview on my machine, as well as windows 8. Come a while later it is time for windows 10 to come off, but am having some trouble with my hard drive partitions. I have two hard drives. One is an 80GB intel m.2 ssd and the other is a 1TB WD black drive. In retrospect, I should have placed windows 10 on it's own partition on the 1 TB, but I did not. I put windows 8 on my SSD and windows 10 on my HDD. I also have my steam library and all my other stuff on my HDD as it obviously wont fit on my 80GB SSD. So to be clear items like the windows 10 program files are on the same partition as my steam library I use in windows 8. I tried to delete windows 10 by first deleting it from the boot page under system configuration, which worked successfully. When I boot my PC windows 10 is no longer an option to boot in, only 8.1. The part I am confused about is there is a system reserved partition on my HDD which I assumed to be from windows 10. I will be clear though that there is only one. I assumed there would be a system reserved partition on the HDD for windows 10 as well as another system reserved partition on my SDD for windows 8.1 but there is only one, on the HDD. So on my HDD there is a system reserved partition (assumed for win 10), another large partition where most things are stored, then finally another small 46MB unallocated volume that came from who knows where. On my SSD there is only one partition, but should there not be a system reserved partition for windows 8.1 as well? More, though I no longer have the option to boot into windows 10, I am unable to delete it's files. Whenever I try, I receive "Folder access denied" errors. I am also unable to delete any of the partitions in disk management. I am honestly clueless, there isn't anything I can't back up on my computer and I still have a windows 8.1 install disk so reformatting and reinstalling everything could work, but is not the preferred method. I would appreciate any help you may offer!

 

[Samat]

Have you tried booting the computer without the HDD plugged in? If the computer boots ok without the HDD you could backup all the data on it to a external HDD and then use a linux live cd/dvd/usb to wipe all the partitions on the HDD. Then create a new partition and format the drive from Windows and copy all the files/folders back. Deleting the partition(s) removes all the data so make sure you have backed up everything you need.

 

[johnbl]

the boot loader will be installed on the reserved partition of the active device. The active primary partition. if you have two primary partitions, the first one deteted I thing gets priority.

disconnect the drive you don't want to have your boot loader on, boot on a install image, then run the bootsector repair commands>
bootrec.exe /scanos
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

the second problem you had is attempting to access the windows 10 directories from your other version of a windows OS. This is a security feature written into the file system, access to the files is controlled by a globally unique Identifier.
to gain access to the files you have to takeownership of the directory/files:
here is info:http://www.thewindowsclub.com/take-ownership-windows-8
(yes, there are execptions but you most likely don't want to deal with them)

note: you can not give ownership back so don't take ownership from the windows 10 installer if you ever plan to boot on those files again.