My PC won't boot up after replacing hard drive.

[Phil]

The brand-new hard drive arrived this afternoon. I installed it and installed a copy of Windows 10. Everything went flawlessly and, I ended up with a brand-new desktop.

Before loading any programs, I decided to make sure I wasn’t in the same boat as when I posted my first message in this thread. Essentially, I wanted to know whether or not it would restart correctly.

To my dismay, having clicked “restart” the machine began the bootup process but, exactly as before, I arrived at the blue window logo and the revolving dots all of which disappeared after a few seconds leaving me with a black screen – and that was the end of its attempt to boot up.

I tried again and exactly the same thing happened.

I returned to the Boot Sequence page and tried to boot directly from the hard drive: the machine said it was a non-system disk.

That’s all the progress I have made so far.

[Bastet]

We’re now looking at bad installation media or the PC cannot run 20H2.
Did you create the media from official Microsoft source?
Download an older version of Windows 10 here: TechBench by WZT (v4.1.1) perhaps try 1909.
Do you have any other drives connected other than the boot USB?
Ensure there’s no CD/DVD in that drive.
Did you install any drivers?
Try turning off the PC, disconnect from the mains, (if laptop remove battery) & press & hold the power button for 30 seconds then reconnect everything.
Are you creating the partition as MBR or GPT?

Does this help:

https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/non-system-disk-or-disk-error.html

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/windows-10-error-non-system-disk-press-any-key/805f9545-e180-4543-9589-48fd11c1c527?auth=1

[Phil]

Hi Bastet,
According to Microsoft, my PC exceeds the requirements for running 20H2
I created the installation media from the official Microsoft page.
I haven’t yet tried an older version of Windows 10.
No other drives are connected.
There’s no CD/DVD in the drive.
When I arrived at the new desktop page after Windows 10 was installed, I installed drivers for chipset, storage and video – in that order.
I’ve tried turning off the PC, disconnecting from the mains and holding the power button for 30 seconds.
I didn’t create any partitions manually. I just let the installation media do its work.
Hope this info helps.
Many thanks for your suggestions and I’m working my way through the tips on the two links you supplied.

[Bastet]

I’d clean install again, then install chipset & restart, if OK them move to Graphics & restart again, if still OK then finally the storage.
If it fails on chipset then clean install again & try Graphics first.
Are you installing any Windows updates before installing the drivers?
I’d redo the media creation tool (if possible) in case of corruption.

[Phil]

I’ll do as you suggest, thanks
I haven’t been installing Windows updates before installing the drivers, no.

[Bastet]

You may wish to do that before installing drivers.

[phillpower2]

Just an observation from me atm, you make no mention above having disconnected the original 500GB boot drive that was faulty, can you just confirm that before installing Windows 10 on the new HDD that you first of all removed the faulty HDD.

[phillpower2]

Should I leave things as they are and stop wondering why the new HDD didn’t boot in PC 1?

That would be a definite yes from me and just for good measure I would suggest that you create a new system restore point on both PCs asap.

[Phil]

Great thinking! As soon as I read your message, I didn’t waste a single minute before creating the restore points you suggest.

Many thanks for your help in this matter and also many thanks to Bastet.

I think it might be safe to call this thread concluded.

P.S. This is a great PC help forum!

[phillpower2]

Glad we could