[SOLVED] Windows 10 needs Windows 7 to boot?

[Nickjoshuablock]

I have a 1TB HDD and I have 2 partitions: one for Windows 10 and the other for everything else. Also, I have Windows 7 on my SSD. When I try to boot from the HDD, it cannot find an OS to boot from. Another time I got to the Windows Recovery and said that WIndows need to be repaired.

Puzzling, when I boot off my SSD as the primary drive while the HDD is plugged by SATA as a secondary drive, Windows 10 loads. When only the SSD is plugged in, Windows 7 loads.

How come I need both the SSD and HDD to be plugged in just to run Windows 10? I got Windows 10 by upgrading Windows 7 is that makes a difference.

 

[captaincharisma]

likely because you have a dual boot setup so the MBR needs to see both operating systems in order to function properly.

 

[TJ Hooker]

The Windows boot loader is likely installed on the Windows 7 driver. If you install windows while another drive with windows already installed is present, it may detect that a boot loader is already present and not install it. You can solve this by reinstalling windows 10 with no other drives connected during install.

 

[Colif]

lets stop guessing, can you go to disk management in win 10 (right click start, its in this menu) and take a screenshot of what it shows, and share the screenshot here (upload to an image sharing web site and show link here)

 

[Nickjoshuablock]

Sorry for my late replay. Here it is. Disk Management

 

[SkyNetRising]

Easy explanation.
Your HDD doesn't have a valid bootloader.

Bootloader is located on SSD. Without SSD connected, you can not boot windows 7 or windows 10.

 

[SkyNetRising]

If you want to make your HDD bootable, you can do it by:

deleting recovery partition on HDD and​

creating a new bootloader partition.​

​

You can do it with these commands. Execute from elevated command prompt:

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 1​

(make sure 931GB HDD is selected)​

list partition​

select partition 3​

(make sure 850MB recovery partition is selected)​

delete partition override​

create partition primary​

active​

format fs=ntfs​

assign letter=H​

exit​

bcdboot c:\windows /s H:​

(If you get any error executing these commands, then stop immediately. Deleting or formatting the wrong partition will make you loose data.)

That's it. Now you should be able to boot into windows 10 with only HDD connected.