Ive got a big problem with windows 10

[Josh380]

I don't know what happened. Everything was running fine. Windows 10 pro installed on an ssd, gigabyte ga-f2a88xm-d3h motherboard with an AMD a10 processor.

I pulled a non operating system hard drive from my system, didn't have ANYTHING on it, (OS installed on ssd) and now my system won't boot. I don't get the operating system not found error, but windows 10 boot manager pops up and starts automatic repair. Well automatic repair fails, I try using the windows 10 CD, that fails, the system doesn't see the recovery drive that windows supposedly made for me. I'm totally SCREWED! So I decide to try a complete reinstall...reformat the partition. Now it says windows can't be installed on the drive because the partition is formatted NTFS, and not GPT. WTF? If it couldn't be installed on that drive in NTFS format, how did I do it the first time?

So now I've disconnected all drives associated with windows 10, installed a completely different drive and tried installing from CD.

I don't understand how this is even possible, but the Windows 10 boot manager STILL comes up trying to repair windows 10, which it will ultimately fail!!!

So now I can't get past this boot manager loop. I've disconnected power, ram, CMOS battery..everything now in an attempt to get past this. Not even sure if this will work and I'm quite upset..

Can anyone explain what the hell is going on here and how to fix it before things get ugly?

 

[Josh380]

I've also put a jumper over the cmos clear pins.

 

[Josh380]

Also I should note that this all started as an upgrade from windows 7. So I'm trying to start off the same way I did last time, with windows 7.

 

[Josh380]

Funny how stepping away from things tends to work a situation out.

I was able to reset the bios, loaded optimized defaults, then boot to my windows 7 CD, and eventually was able to install windows 7 on a healthy partition.

During one of the reboots I noticed a familiar dual boot screen, showing an option for windows 7 or windows 10.

This is a shot in the dark but I'm guessing there's something about a windows 7/10 dual boot drive that my motherboard doesn't like.

So I hooked up the ssd via a USB adapter to check the filesystem. Everything looked nice, clean and formatted, ready to go.

As we speak I'm installing windows 7 to the ssd. I read something somewhere about going into msconfig then the boot section, then clicking to select windows 10 as the main OS to boot to.

Hopefully this combined with the willpower to avoid messing with the drive system any further will prevent any future system catastrophes from occurring.

*After running msconfig I noticed I now had two windows 7 installations, one listed as active and current OS, and the other just listed. I deleted the just listed version..no more dual boot.

Now the fun stuff..installing drivers and upgrading to 10. Will revisit msconfig after the upgrade to get rid of 7.

 

[RT48]

Sounds like a BIOS setting changed from UFEI to legacy boot.

 

[Josh380]

Well whatever I changed that caused this, after over 10 hours of work, my system is back up and running, and I learned a few things along the way. What a pain..hopefully it'll never happen again.