[SOLVED] The old Windows installation is still rising from the grave

[Jedo]

I installed Windows on a new SSD for one of my family members and I formatted the C partition on their old hard drive to delete the old Windows, but every time their PC starts, it asks to choose between the 2 Windows. If I choose the old one, it tries to repair and fails of course.

What else should I delete so that the PC doesn't think that there is still Windows 10 on the old hard drive? I know Windows reserves a separate small partition for...I don't remember what. Do I have to find and delete that one too?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

What most likely happened is that when you installed windows you had another drive connected and that drive has the boot information on it

There is a way to move those files to the other drive with bcdedit

 

[Lafong]

I'm guessing you formatted C on the old drive, but the boot files from the old drive are still on the old drive.....in a partition other than C.

Walk us through what you did in more detail.

Did you:

1; remove the old hard drive. Install the new hard drive. Do a clean install to the new hard drive. Confirm that it boots with the old drive removed.

then:

2; reattach the old hard drive. Boot the PC from the new hard drive. Go to Windows Disk Management, identify the old hard drive, and attempt to remove all partitions and reformat the entire drive right there in Disk Management.

Or some other way?

 

[Jedo]

This problem just got upgraded. Because I didn't remove the old drive when installing the new Windows, I just realized that the bootloader for the new windows was installed to the old drive. The reason I want the old drive to remain connected during the installation is because I don't have any large USB sticks near me, so I am installing Windows from the old hard drive to the new SSD.

At no point does Windows seem to ask you where you want to install the bootloader. It just decided to install it to the old drive. Is there a way to change this?

I tried moving the bootloader using EasyBCD and didn't have the best results (tells me that I'm trying to move to a logical partition even though it is a primary partition).

 

[USAFRet]

This problem just got upgraded. Because I didn't remove the old drive when installing the new Windows, I just realized that the bootloader for the new windows was installed to the old drive. The reason I want the old drive to remain connected during the installation is because I don't have any large USB sticks near me, so I am installing Windows from the old hard drive to the new SSD.

At no point does Windows seem to ask you where you want to install the bootloader. It just decided to install it to the old drive. Is there a way to change this?

I tried moving the bootloader using EasyBCD and didn't have the best results (tells me that I'm trying to move to a logical partition even though it is a primary partition).

Right.
If there are multiple physical drives connected during the install, it often puts the boot partition on the second drive.

If that other drive already has an OS and boot partition, the data for the new install simply gets merged with the previous.
It figured you were trying to purposely do a dual boot situation.

Nothing you choose or select, it just does it.

The way to prevent this is to have only ONE drive physically connected during the install.

 

[USAFRet]

Please show us a screencap of the current Disk Management window.

 

[Jedo]

It's a mess now.

In the end, I gave up and simply bought a USB flash drive and will reinstall Windows from it, like I normally would, with the other hard drive disconnected.

And I can then hopefully just format the old drive completely, including all the extra partitions that windows created on it. Thanks for clarifying things!

 

[Colif]

The boot loader was on ssd, but C was on the hdd.
the 3 question mark parts on old could have been the old windows partitions if it was set as MBR

you did right thing starting again with just ssd in