Weird Windows install issue - Rakk is confused!

[Rakk]

Firstly I think this thread should actually be titled 'Why Rakk shouldn't go messing with Windows' , but anyways.

I decided it was time for a clean Windows install, I've been having some weird issues and throughout various upgrades from bog standard Win 10 to Creators edition to the latest one (1803) I've always just let it do an upgrade so I figured I should probably do a proper clean install to tidy stuff up.

What I did: I downloaded the installation media tool yesterday and stuff it on a USB stick, copied everything I think I needed to copy and made a backup image just in case anyways.
So this morning I booted to the USB stick (did not change the boot order just booted to the USB stick), found my activation key (its Win 10 Pro - from an MSDN subscription), went through the setup, got rid of the partitions from my SSD and told it to install there - then let it go on its merry way.
Not too much later it rebooted, and when it came back it had two Win10 options, one on partition 2 and one on 7 - now I figured this was prob because on my E drive there is still the unregistered Win10 from when I ordered the machine - though it did strike me as rather odd it popped up how it did, it defaulted to partition 2, try to boot, screen went black and after a minute it returned me to the which Win 10 do you want (partition 2 or partition 7) - I chose 7 this time and it booted (very slowly) into the unregistered Windows on my E drive - I swore then told it to reboot (which went very very slowly since I hadn't used it in a while it took forever to do its updates it wanted), so when it rebooted it asked which partition I wanted, I let it default back to 2 again and Windows loaded up - and this was my new installation, so I thought ok, this seems to work, installed the important things (Everquest 2, Discord, Chrome, Steam, Oculus Home etc).
However now whenever I boot its asks about which Windows I want again, so I thought I'd loot at the boot order, this is where it gets strange - my SSD just doesn't show in there at all. So after some head scratching I think it's actually put my new clean install boot info into the the boot manager (or whatever it is that determines what will boot) on my E drive! - Not helpful!
Now I don't really know how the boot stuff works so I may be using the wrong terminology.

So, anyone know how to sort out this mess?
Or is it just do another clean install?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Weird. I would just do a reinstall, probably quicker than trying to mess around with partitions.

 

[Tony1044]

Weird. I would just do a reinstall, probably quicker than trying to mess around with partitions.

Agreed.

I'd do a reinstall, making sure to delete every partition.

Although...makes me wonder... you say you did get rid of them from your SSD...do you by any chance have any bootable HDD's (or even other SSD's) in your system? I've occasionally removed all but the drive I want to install windows onto before now to make sure I get it absolutely right.

 

[Rakk]

Weird. I would just do a reinstall, probably quicker than trying to mess around with partitions.

Yeah I thought that might be the answer - think I may disconnect the E drive though cos thats possibly what confused it in the first place.

Agreed.

I'd do a reinstall, making sure to delete every partition.

Although...makes me wonder... you say you did get rid of them from your SSD...do you by any chance have any bootable HDD's (or even other SSD's) in your system? I've occasionally removed all but the drive I want to install windows onto before now to make sure I get it absolutely right.

I did delete every partition on the SSD, but yeah as I mentioned there was still a Win10 install on the E drive and I think that may have caused the issue


Won't do the re-reinstall til tomorrow though - got an EQ2 raid at 6:30 , and everything seems to work fine for the mo (but I certainly don't want it left in that state).
Thanks guys.

Rakk is now grumpy about having to reinstall again!

 

[Lez501]

I always delete all partitions, and disconnect all but the drive I'm installing to - worth a try...........

 

[ubuysa]

If the 'unregistered Windows on my E: drive' is the one that came with the PC there will be an EFI partition on the E: drive (hidden of course) and I expect that's what's causing the apparent dual boot confusion. Personally I see no point in keeping that original Windows system, you're unlikely to ever want to use it and, as you've just seen, it's likely to get in the way. IMO it's a waste of disk real estate...

I would run Diskpart (I'm assuming you know how to use that?) and list the partitions on that disk. If you have one labelled System (which has no drive letter) that is 100MB in size that's the EFI partition. You'll probably also have a Recovery partition (typically 500MB and which also has no drive letter) as well as the E: partition. I would delete all those partitions and either extend whatever other partition is on that disk to occupy the space or, if that's the whole of that disk, create a new primary partition the size of the disk.

Then I'd do a clean reinstall (onto your regular system drive). Do a custom install and delete all partitions on that drive as well so the whole drive shows as unallocated. Then allocate a single partition the size of the drive, the install tool will automatically create the System and Recovery partitions again. Install Windows into the largest partition (it's selected by default anyway).

 

[Rakk]

If the 'unregistered Windows on my E: drive' is the one that came with the PC there will be an EFI partition on the E: drive (hidden of course) and I expect that's what's causing the apparent dual boot confusion. Personally I see no point in keeping that original Windows system, you're unlikely to ever want to use it and, as you've just seen, it's likely to get in the way. IMO it's a waste of disk real estate...

Yes it is indeed the one PCS put on there - but as I found out about a year after I had the machine it was actually quite useful to have that one sitting there doing nothing on the E drive when my SSD went belly up as it meant I had something to boot into without having to faff about installing Windows onto one of my other two drives that had data on them - so that's the main reason it hasn't been removed - ie. a backup OS

But I will definitely disconnect that drive (and the other one as well just in case) this evening when re-reinstalling.

 

[ubuysa]

Yes it is indeed the one PCS put on there - but as I found out about a year after I had the machine it was actually quite useful to have that one sitting there doing nothing on the E drive when my SSD went belly up as it meant I had something to boot into without having to faff about installing Windows onto one of my other two drives that had data on them - so that's the main reason it hasn't been removed - ie. a backup OS

But I will definitely disconnect that drive (and the other one as well just in case) this evening when re-reinstalling.

You'd be much better off using something like Macrium Reflect to take a regular image of your system drive to a backup device. I do that on a schedule overnight every night, and I keep the last 14 images. That way, should anything at all go wrong, I can restore a known good image and be working normally in about 10 minutes...

 

[Rakk]

You'd be much better off using something like Macrium Reflect to take a regular image of your system drive to a backup device. I do that on a schedule overnight every night, and I keep the last 14 images. That way, should anything at all go wrong, I can restore a known good image and be working normally in about 10 minutes...

I do an image of the C drive every 2 weeks, and restoring the image would indeed be the simplest way of doing it - if I had a spare drive lying around to restore it onto - which I did not until a replacement drive turned up a day or two later (Amazon did send out a replacement very quickly).

Yes I had the other two drives in the machine but I didn't think you could restore an image onto a drive which already had stuff on it - well not without wiping something out.

 

[ubuysa]

Yes I had the other two drives in the machine but I didn't think you could restore an image onto a drive which already had stuff on it - well not without wiping something out.

You can (and should) restore an image to the drive it came from, it will overwrite everything that's on there.

 

[Rakk]

You can (and should) restore an image to the drive it came from, it will overwrite everything that's on there.

Yep that's what I thought , which is why when the drive went belly up (and by that I mean the SSD totally died) I couldn't do that anyways so was thankful to have a working install still on the E drive - meant I could still use the PC whilst waiting for the replacement SSD.

 

[ubuysa]

Yep that's what I thought , which is why when the drive went belly up (and by that I mean the SSD totally died) I couldn't do that anyways so was thankful to have a working install still on the E drive - meant I could still use the PC whilst waiting for the replacement SSD.

Ah. That's what my laptop is for....

 

[Rakk]

Well Win10 is now clean installed (again) - wonder what weirdness I'll come across next - I seem to attract weird issues

And yes I disconnected the D and E drives before doing the install, though now after reconnecting they are the D and F drives - oh well nevermind.

So am currently installing a whole load of stuff (and melting cos its been hot today and my house is boiling!)

 

[Oussebon]

At least you stomped on the dual boot I think there's a way to have it automatically pick one of the OSes even where you have a dual boot setup. I have a Windows 7 install on one of my SSDs but eventually persuaded my PC to always load Windows 10, and do so without asking me... When I want 7 for certain older games I just select a different one-off boot option in the BIOS.

I suppose one can just reassign the drives back to their old letters in Disk Management.

 

[Tony1044]

Diskmgmt.msc

Change D to say H then F to D then finally H to F...

When you right click a drive there, there's the option to change the drive letter

 

[Rakk]

Diskmgmt.msc

Change D to say H then F to D then finally H to F...

When you right click a drive there, there's the option to change the drive letter

Yep, I got it done slightly earlier - the DVD drive was busy being E so I went E->G, F->E and G->F
Have been installing like mad - I've got the main things installed though - Chrome, Everquest2, Oculus Home, Skyrim VR, Steam and Discord - and my SQL Server and SSMS, and now installing Fallout 4 VR (edit: geez this thing is taking forever to install) though wont have time to try that out this evening.

Testing out the VR games in this heat is a dumb idea anyway - the lenses steam up for a start

 

[ubuysa]

Glad you got it sorted!

Personally I do a clean reinstall quite often, probably every 3 months or so, it's habit I suppose from the old days when Windows really did need reinstalling every so often. I find it quite therapeutic, a bit like the warm feeling you get from painting a grubby wall and making it look all clean and bright again. Regular reinstalls also make you very good at them, I probably don't have the volume of software installed that you do (I don't game) but I can do a clean install of Windows and have everything back up and running with all software reinstalled and all configuration done in half a day. I sometimes learn something new with each reinstall too.

Heat? The mercury gets to 30C there for a couple of days and the roads melt and the tracks buckle. If you think that's hot you should come to Crete in July and August....

 

[Tony1044]

Glad you got it sorted!

Personally I do a clean reinstall quite often, probably every 3 months or so, it's habit I suppose from the old days when Windows really did need reinstalling every so often. I find it quite therapeutic, a bit like the warm feeling you get from painting a grubby wall and making it look all clean and bright again. Regular reinstalls also make you very good at them, I probably don't have the volume of software installed that you do (I don't game) but I can do a clean install of Windows and have everything back up and running with all software reinstalled and all configuration done in half a day. I sometimes learn something new with each reinstall too.

Heat? The mercury gets to 30C there for a couple of days and the roads melt and the tracks buckle. If you think that's hot you should come to Crete in July and August....

I tend to only do a reinstall when a major upgrade comes along (so every 6 months, these days!). It's quite tedious for me to get all the tools and applications back on in just the way I like them. It's why I've allowed the odd in-place upgrade to go ahead...despite the fact I've yet to have one "just work" so inevitably end up doing the clean rebuild anyway.

Like yourself, Ubuysa, once I've gone through the pain of the rebuild, I take an image of my machine so at least if push-comes-to-shove, I have that to hand to zip back on.

I know we've chatted about backups before - I also have a private dropbox type application and things like my documents folder are all automatically backed up and encrypted. One of the things I absolutely love about it though, is that it keeps copies of all changes so in the event I ever got hit by encrypting malware, I can always go back to a point where it didn't exist.

It also has the advantage of being on my own domain so where places block the likes of dropbox, I can usually get through to my own.

And of course, that is backed up as well etc etc.

We do love to moan about the weather here in the UK. Rains - too wet. Sun - too hot. Snow - grind to a halt. Wind - things fall apart. It's our national hobby

 

[ubuysa]

I know we've chatted about backups before - I also have a private dropbox type application and things like my documents folder are all automatically backed up and encrypted. One of the things I absolutely love about it though, is that it keeps copies of all changes so in the event I ever got hit by encrypting malware, I can always go back to a point where it didn't exist.

Yes we have talked about backups before, but I don't think you can talk too much about backup strategies.

I do use Dropbox and have some absolutely essential stuff on there, I only use the free version though.

My backup device (and it's on-site so I know it doesn't meet your (correct) definition of a backup device) is a 3TB external hard drive. I have that on a USB controlled mains switch so that the drive is only online for the time it takes to do the backups, that reduces the likelihood of encrypting malware affecting that drive. For 'belt and braces' I also have the network automatically disconnected (via a Powershell command) whilst the backups are taking place. As I understand it, encrypting malware 'phones home' to get the public/private key pair and if it can't phone home it can't encrypt. I also run Comodo Internet Security which means that all unknown processes run in a sandbox where they can't get at the real file-system in any case. I think I'm as protected as I can be.....

 

[Tony1044]

Yes we have talked about backups before, but I don't think you can talk too much about backup strategies.

I do use Dropbox and have some absolutely essential stuff on there, I only use the free version though.

My backup device (and it's on-site so I know it doesn't meet your (correct) definition of a backup device) is a 3TB external hard drive. I have that on a USB controlled mains switch so that the drive is only online for the time it takes to do the backups, that reduces the likelihood of encrypting malware affecting that drive. For 'belt and braces' I also have the network automatically disconnected (via a Powershell command) whilst the backups are taking place. As I understand it, encrypting malware 'phones home' to get the public/private key pair and if it can't phone home it can't encrypt. I also run Comodo Internet Security which means that all unknown processes run in a sandbox where they can't get at the real file-system in any case. I think I'm as protected as I can be.....

Totally agree that we can't talk enough about backups. I also happen to think you have a very robust system that most people could learn from.

In fact any backups that anyone takes, even to an external USB drive they carry around is better than nothing at all

To be honest, I've kind of given up in the battle against encrypting malware - by which I mean they're getting so clever now that all you can really do is try to mitigate the impacts if it happens.

I have a virtual machine now that I use as a sheepdip so anything that I download that might in any way be dodgy (and that even means open source stuff from Github etc) is downloaded to that.

It has no network shares, is logged onto with an account with minimal permissions and is in a DMZ with only ports 80 and 443 open to the world. I can even sniff network packets if I really feel the need.

But that's not to say I don't still occasionally download random stuff