BitLocker for Second Drive

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Would suggest reinstall of Windows. Suggest post 7 explains the mess.

do you know of a free program that I could use to backup all my applications so i don’t have to reinstall them one by one. I Googled it and Easeuse came up but the want like $80.00, I need a free program. Or does Windows have that built in in there backup program already, and if so how do I do it?

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Would suggest reinstall of Windows. Suggest post 7 explains the mess.

Okay so something is screwed up. I backup all my files and am using the Windows Media Creation Tool which I just created, and this is the message I am getting when I try to install Windows, oh and I can’t retrieve my old installation because I already formatted the partition and it’s saying that there aren’t any restore points on the drive. So now what, am I screwed?[ATTACH]3759[/ATTACH]

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Okay new update when I put my D drive back into the laptop it is able to install Windows 10 back on the SSD. I have no idea what is going on. So I’m going to reinstall Windows 10 on the SSD and go from there hopefully you guys can help me.

[jmarket]

do you know of a free program that I could use to backup all my applications so i don’t have to reinstall them one by one.

Unless the programs are Portable, meaning that no installation was necessary originally, you will HAVE to reinstall your programs.

The way I would recommend you go about solving this issue is to follow this guide to get a copy of Windows 10

https://pchelpforum.net/resources/download-windows-and-office-isos.87/

Remember you are only entitled to install the same version of Windows for free as the one previously activated.

After you have got that ISO, and backed up all the files/folders you need, extract and burn the ISO to either a USB drive or DVD. Once you have the install media ready, boot to it and use it to delete all partitions on BOTH drives.

Now you have to decide which physical disc you want as your C drive, then disconnect the other drive so there is no confusion. Proceed with the Windows installation on the remaining drive and after Windows is fully installed shut the pc down and reconnect the second drive and format it. If it does not automatically become your D drive you may have to juggle some drive renaming, but let’s cross that bridge later if necessary

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Okay so I was able to delete the partitions on my SSD and install Windows on it, but Windows looks weird, I originally had Windows 10 Pro 64 and that’s what I picked for the installation but I looks weird, like the option to sync my calendar isn’t there along with some other stuff. I am in the process of updating right now so hopefully that fixes that, but It still just looks weird to me.

Also this is the 2nd time I ended up installing Windows, it was working fine and downloading the updates but then it froze up so I did a hard reset so when it started back up it said working on updates so it installed them and I logged on and immediately got a BSOD saying dpc_watchdog_violation so it restarted and I got another BSOD this time saying driver_corrupted_expool and it restarted again and I got yet another BSOD, something about page_fault, so I’m wondering if it ended up installing incomplete updates since I hard restarted during the download process. Any ideas?

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Well so far so good. I was able to install Windows 10 on the SSD, I had to delete all the partitions on my SSD, and when Windows updated it went back to normal. Once I am done installing everything I am going to disconnect my SSD and connect my SSHD and delete all the partitions on that via the Windows 10 ISO and then hopefully that will be able to get rid of that EFI and recovery partition from my old install. And hopefully everything will come out right in Disk Manager.

Oh and speaking of Disk Manager I just looked and of course there is something weird, It loooks like there are now three recovery partitions on the SSD, I am assuming this is becuase it took me three tries to install Windows, the question now is which ones do I delete? GODDDD, my head feels like its going to explode dealing with this thing. Hopefully its just a matter of using the ISO again and deleting the two recovery partitions. I’ll include a screen shot of Disk Manager. And just to know that D drive is just my external drive that I have connected.[ATTACH]3763[/ATTACH]

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Okay so this is what it looks like now, for some reason my SSD will not switch to Disk 0, I changed the boot arder in BIOS but that didn’t work, I’m thinking its maybe just my MB, maybe the SATA drive is meant to be the primary disk not the M.2 SSD drive. I guess next will be deleting two of those recovery partitions, I’m not sure why there are three of them, and I’m not sure which ones to delete, I am assuming I should keep the one that is most recent.[ATTACH]3764[/ATTACH]

[jmarket]

Did you follow the earlier instructions and remove ALL partitions on both drives before disconnecting the drive you wish to have as D drive, doesnt look like it?

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Did you follow the earlier instructions and remove ALL partitions on both drives before disconnecting the drive you wish to have as D drive, doesnt look like it?

Yes. What I did was first I disconnected the D Drive and reformatted and deleted all partitions and installed Windows on my SSD. Then after I finally got everything up to date on that, I removed my SSD, and put my D Drive back in. I tried to format and delete the partitions on the D Drive using the Windows ISO but it wasn’t working, so I used diskpart, which seems to have worked fine. I think my SSD has all of those recovery partitions becuase it took me three tries before Windows would install and not mess up. Unfortunately I didn’t think to reformat or delete the partitions in between the three installs becuase I didin’t know it was adding another recovery partition evertime I did a install. I think I may be able to use disk part or the Windows ISO to delete two of those partitions, the only problem I have is I don’t know which partition is the newest. Because that would probably be the one I would want to keep, right?

[jmarket]

Did suggest you remove all partitions on both drives before anything disconnected. See post 34.

[jmarket]

Because everything is a mess, I would suggest swapping the SATA ports and re-installing Windows.. It looks like you have your SSD in SATA port #2 and your HD in SATA port #1. Reverse these connections.

Windows should, in theory, always be installed to the C: drive, never D:/ or another letter. Put your SSD on SATA port #1 on the motherboard, and your HD on SATA port #2. Not doing this will cause further issues down the line

You might also need to use DiskPart and clean the drives. This will wipe everything off the drive you select. To do so, at the Command Prompt in Setup, type:

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
exit

[veeg]

Any updates for us?

[Brandon_Byrnes]

Yeah, sorry for the delay. Everything is good now. And I was able to enable BitLocker on both of my drives. THANK YOU A HUGE AMOUNT for all the help you guys gave me, this FUBAR and you helped me fix it. Once again thank you.

[veeg]

Thanks for the update. I’ll mark your thread.. Also good to hear you got that sorted out.