"missing operating system" after swapping a secondary HDD

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techforum99

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Oct 12, 2020
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i have an ssd with win 10 and all my installed programs. i also have 2 hdd's with other files on them. i bought a new hdd, swapped it for one of the old ones, and windows gave me a blue screen. when it rebooted, it just says "missing operating system" even though the OS isn't installed on the old hdd.
so i put back the old hdd, it's now back to its original cofiguration, and it still says "missing operating system"!! i'm stumped now. how is that possible?

all 3 drives are detected in the bios & functioning properly.
 
Check the drive with the OS on it and make sure the cables are attached. If they are even the slightest off it can cause issues.
Remove and reconnect they data and power cables.

Even try it with just the OS drive attached.
 
I've had similar issues, ie multiple drives in the rig when the OS gets installed.
Windows for whatever reason, decided to put the OS on one drive but the boot info on another.
I suspect this could be your case as well.
why it didn't go back to normal once the original drive arrangement was put back, I cannot say.

first up, get into BIOS and make sure the SSD is the first drive in the boot order.

another solution would be to remove all HDDs and only have the SSD in and reload Windows.
but therein lies your issue - getting the PC to boot so you can do this.
so you'd need a bootable USB stick with the latest Win10 image on it. an easy process using the Windows Media Creation Tool.

even using the inbuilt tools like BCDEDIT and DISKPART is going to stump you at that first hurdle of getting the PC to boot.
 
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