Windows 8 on two partitions, won't boot

[orangedude]

Hi,

Recently I just bought a new PC along with a 180 GB SSD. My previous PC had Windows 8 installed on one of the hard drives already.

Here is what I did:

1. Installed Windows 8 on SSD on my new PC
2. Moved my old HDD (2 TB HDD) with Win 8 over to my new PC
3. Attempt to boot into new Win 8 partition.

However, the boot loader now seems to be confused with 2 Win 8 partitions, and fails to boot into either win 8 installation with "Error loading OS". Any suggestions on how to fix this besides formatting my 2 TB HDD?

Thanks

 

[abekl]

Sure. You can easily fix this by using a free utility called EasyBCD 2.2. It'll let you specify which drive to boot from, make sure the right boot files are there, and alot more.

 

[orangedude]

Sure. You can easily fix this by using a free utility called EasyBCD 2.2. It'll let you specify which drive to boot from, make sure the right boot files are there, and alot more.

I have installed EasyBCD, do you have a bit more details about how to disable boot drive for HDD and it's boot files once it's plugged in?

I can only run the program while HDD is NOT plugged in btw

 

[abekl]

No, I'm sorry I don't have any more information about the tool.

 

[bobFoss]

If Windows 8 installations are on MBR disks you can try "Dual-boot Repair" tool that comes with Visual BCD.
Just click on "Automatic Repair".

If your installations are on GPT disks then for repairing you have to take manual steps:
Use "bcdboot.exe" utility to fix booting for both systems (read carefully command line options) you have to specify source path of Windows installation and destination drive of boot files.
For example:
bcdboot c:\windows
(most common case to resolve booting for Windows installed on c: drive, destination is "system" partition)

Fix booting for first installation, then for second = two bcdboot commands.