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Boot Windows installed on another drive via editing BCD?


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#1 nomad5739

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 04:21 PM

Back story:
May of last year I modded the UEFI for my Asus Sabertooth x79 to add NVME boot support.

However, over the course of the year I've had this weird crash issue that happens intermittently where the screen goes black.

If I was watching a YouTube the audio will continue to play as normal or if I was in a conference call the audio would continue work for a period of time but I could not connect to the machine via RDP to try to see what was going on.

To troubleshoot the issue I cloned my NVME drive back onto a SATA SSD using DD from a Linux live CD and reverted the mod.

To my surprise when I booted my computer up it booted from the NVME drive instead of the SATA SSD!

I'm thinking that was possible because the drive was cloned and the disk signatures are the same.

Also, the SATA SSD shows up as offline in Windows because the signatures are the same preventing it from being used.


Thread:
I would like to keep using the NVME drive but random system crashes are annoying so I'm wondering if this "chain loading" (BIOS/UEFI loads Windows Boot Loader from SATA SSD which loads Windows from NVME drive) can be leveraged.

I still don't know if the crashing issue has gone away. It's only been a day so this may be a fruitless endeavor.



#2 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 04:46 PM

I doubt that the issue is due to the NVME device (unless it is defective), the BIOS/UEFi mod you did should not affect in any way the behaviour of the OS (once booted).

 

The HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is there exactly to have the OS, once booted, use its own drivers without any need of the BIOS or UEFI interrupts/services/etc.

 

I think there is not any particular issue in initiating the boot from one device (SATA) and actually load the OS from another device (NVME), but it won't likely change anything IF the issue is with the NVME device or its driver.

 

You may want to try BOOTICE to edit your BCD as it is more user friendly than BCDEDIT.

 

There are several threads about its use, right now I cannot find one specific to "boot from another disk", but I seem to remember there were a couple ones, anyway, all the needed info should be findable in Misty's notes:

http://www.mistyproj...Edit/index.html

 

About the conflicting Disk Signature, you should be able to manually change it with a hex/disk editor, but most probably if you "force" online the disk via Diskpart, the OS will automatically create a new one :unsure:

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#3 nomad5739

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 05:41 PM

I doubt that the issue is due to the NVME device (unless it is defective), the BIOS/UEFi mod you did should not affect in any way the behaviour of the OS (once booted).

 

The HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is there exactly to have the OS, once booted, use its own drivers without any need of the BIOS or UEFI interrupts/services/etc.

 

I think there is not any particular issue in initiating the boot from one device (SATA) and actually load the OS from another device (NVME), but it won't likely change anything IF the issue is with the NVME device or its driver.

 

You may want to try BOOTICE to edit your BCD as it is more user friendly than BCDEDIT.

 

There are several threads about its use, right now I cannot find one specific to "boot from another disk", but I seem to remember there were a couple ones, anyway, all the needed info should be findable in Misty's notes:

http://www.mistyproj...Edit/index.html

 

About the conflicting Disk Signature, you should be able to manually change it with a hex/disk editor, but most probably if you "force" online the disk via Diskpart, the OS will automatically create a new one :unsure:

 

:duff:

Wonko

 

Thanks for the info. I'll give those notes a read when I can and do some experimenting after I've made a backup.

 

*edit*
Hopefully it's not an issue with the NVME drive itself. Don't want to have to replace it if I can help it.


Edited by nomad5739, 04 May 2021 - 06:04 PM.


#4 antonino61

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Posted 04 May 2021 - 08:26 PM

me, I boot from another disk (nvme) as a rule if I like to. Let me make myself understood by giving you any more details. I have a small drive which the system calls d:\. it hosts my wimboot vhd+wim combos. the next drive (nvme, e:\) hosts full vhd and its lz4 compressed versions, which I can alternatively to boot from d:\ if I like, with no modification whatsoever in the menu.lst. either way is ok (d:\ (hd0,0) or e:\ (hd1,0)). it is 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other to the system.



#5 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 06 May 2021 - 02:15 PM

me, I boot from another disk (nvme) as a rule if I like to. Let me make myself understood by giving you any more details. I have a small drive which the system calls d:\. it hosts my wimboot vhd+wim combos. the next drive (nvme, e:\) hosts full vhd and its lz4 compressed versions, which I can alternatively to boot from d:\ if I like, with no modification whatsoever in the menu.lst. either way is ok (d:\ (hd0,0) or e:\ (hd1,0)). it is 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other to the system.

Do you realize that the OP's question is about a Windows fully installed on a different device from the boot one and has nothing to do with VHD's and WIM's?  :unsure:

 

For that, there should be no need whatsoever to use grub4dos, the "normal" BOOTMGR+BCD should be enough.

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#6 antonino61

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Posted 06 May 2021 - 06:18 PM

ok ok, now I do.



#7 alacran

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Posted 07 May 2021 - 01:11 AM

@ nomad5739

 

About:

 

To troubleshoot the issue I cloned my NVME drive back onto a SATA SSD using DD from a Linux live CD

 

This is an exact copy of the drive and may be the cause of your issue.

 

It is always better to boot from a WinPE and capture a WIM image file of the OS partition/drive using Wimlib-clc or WinNTSetup and redeploy it on the other disk previously partitioned (after re-formating the target partition), WinNTSetup optionally will take care in adding the requiered entry on your selected location for the BCD, see attached picture with suggested options in the final window that opens after selecting Setup, the preselected option Use bootsect.exe to update the boot code will create a new BCD, you should select Do Not Update the Boot Code option (as on attached picture) to keep current BCD and only add a new entry on it, ALL option will make a new entry in the current Bios and UEFI BCDs, then the other options here are Bios, UEFI and NONE which are very understandable, here on this options select according with your needs.

 

Or if you are a new user of WinNTSetup better select Do Not Update the Boot Code option, and change ALL to NONE on first line options, and nothing will be changed on current BCD, in this case I suggest to edit the BCD by means of BootIce, to make sure as a new user you will not select a wrong options and maybe end up with some boot troubles.

 

Attached a picture of my BCD when running BootIce, in your case just add a new Windows entry and continue selecting the respective disk and partition and the OS Title (entry name) you want to see for it during boot.

 

Hope this info was useful for you.

 

alacran

Attached Files


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