How to trash your Windows 11 installation

[Ruby Rod]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue. Ralphie's mom says, "Oh, everybody knows that."

 

[New Wrycuda]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and I had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue.

That seems to be a rather unlikely explanation, but you could be right. Black mark for Windows if that is the case.

Most people simply ignore those “special folders” and make their own folders for data.

I preferred the old days when there were no default user folders, but some users persisted in saving stuff to C:\

 

[Sean Nelson]

I'm not running Windows 11, so what I'm about to say may or may not apply. But it's my observation that past Windows installations create a "recovery partition" that lets you boot a "safe" bare bones copy of Windows in the event that your main installation goes bonkers. When you boot Windows, it actually boots to this recovery partition first, and then boots the main installation.

The problem is that, in its infinite wisdom, when you have more than one drive in the system Windows installs the recovery partition on a different drive than the main installation. The rationale for this is that if your main installation goes belly-up then you can still get into the bare bones copy to do your recovery. But the fatal flaw is that you now have two single points of failure - if the system can't access either drive then it can't boot into Windows.

Because of this, I've always made it a habit to remove all drives except the system drive when installing Windows, which forces the recovery partition to be on the same drive as the main OS goes onto.

 

[Bouldergramp]

For my Dell computes, I have always had to edit the BIOS to account for the drives when adding or removing them.

 

[New Wrycuda]

I'm not running Windows 11, so what I'm about to say may or may not apply. But it's my observation that past Windows installations create a "recovery partition" that lets you boot a "safe" bare bones copy of Windows in the event that your main installation goes bonkers. When you boot Windows, it actually boots to this recovery partition first, and then boots the main installation.

Because of this, I've always made it a habit to remove all drives except the system drive when installing Windows, which forces the recovery partition to be on the same drive as the main OS goes onto.

In any case, it’s good practice to get a new installation up and running before adding extra hardware such as drives.

For a new build, there would be no advantage in adding an extra SATA drive before loading Windows. Depending on accessibility, it might be tempting to fit an M.2 drive during the build, so care required.

If you’re dealing with an OEM computer, the recovery partition(s) will have been already set up.

 

[brn]

Most people simply ignore those “special folders” and make their own folders for data.

People like you and me ignore the special folders. Most people do as MS tells them to.

 

[Ruby Rod]

After I bought the system, I decided I needed more storage, so added the 2nd SSD. No problem. Around then I noticed that a front panel GPU monitor wasn't working and thought it might be related to the installation of the drive. It seems unlikely, but Asus also thought it would be reasonable to just pull the drive and see if the monitor started working. That was the start of the mishap. Since there was no second SSD when the system was set up, any recovery should have been on the boot drive. I was really surprised to find the thing as stubborn about booting as it was, but I don't have a lot of experience with 11. Surprisingly, this machine doesn't seem to have the option of booting from a flash drive. Unlike doing a generic online reload, the ASUS recovery doesn't even have the option of keeping applications, only data.

The monitor is unique to Asus, consisting of two vertical LED bar graphs on the front of the case. They can be assigned to various things, usually CPU load and GPU load. If you do things that use a lot of GPU, like Topaz, having the monitor is actually quite handy.

 

[New Wrycuda]

After I bought the system, I decided I needed more storage, so added the 2nd SSD. No problem. Around then I noticed that a front panel GPU monitor wasn't working and thought it might be related to the installation of the drive. It seems unlikely, but Asus also thought it would be reasonable to just pull the drive and see if the monitor started working. That was the start of the mishap. Since there was no second SSD when the system was set up, any recovery should have been on the boot drive. I was really surprised to find the thing as stubborn about booting as it was, but I don't have a lot of experience with 11. Surprisingly, this machine doesn't seem to have the option of booting from a flash drive. Unlike doing a generic online reload, the ASUS recovery doesn't even have the option of keeping applications, only data.

There’s usually boot options available in BIOS.

I’ve only had OEM recovery experience with Dell, when I investigated as a matter of interest. Very smooth, and updates to latest version. There’s several hidden folders with the necessary software. (Visible in Optimise… Advanced).

There’s better ways to monitor system performance than front panel display.

Differences between Win10 and Win11 are minimal, despite what some say. Others in my office hardly noticed when I did the upgrade.

 

[Robert Zanatta]

Not being able to boot from a USB drive is highly unlikely. What's the make and model of the machine?

 

[Robert Zanatta]

I have three drives and Windows installed it's recovery partition on the boot drive.

You can also move the recovery partition - delete it and recreate it somewhere else.

And Windows doesn't need the recovery partition to operate. The newer versions of Windows boot from the EFI partition to the Windows partition.

 

[SC489]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue. Ralphie's mom says, "Oh, everybody knows that."

You might have had a hidden boot partition on the second drive for some reason?

 

[silentstorm]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue. Ralphie's mom says, "Oh, everybody knows that."

My guess that this happened was your 2 SSD are configured in RAID 0 config. Maybe 2 x 512GB for a 1TB storage. Once you touched any of the drives, it's pretty much gone. Likely a software RAID that you have forgotten, or not aware of.

 

[Ruby Rod]

That might well be what happened, but it's not that way now! Unless I discover some driver issue, my present thought is something to do with the monitor simply failed though no fault of my own. It wasn't the 2nd drive or anything else. I'll have another chat with ASUS. The machine is a ProArt PD500TE. Nothing in it is close to state of the art, but it was extremely cost effective for photo and video processing when B&H had them on sale a while back.

BTW, I started messing with PCs about the time clones of the original IBM came out, but I'm no expert and don't want to be. What I really want to do is go shoot some large format film again!

 

[Ruby Rod]

Resolved! I was wrong again. Another chat with Asus got me a link to replace one of my drivers. Problem solved; the Lumiwiz bar graphs now work as expected. They're actually quite handy when using software like Topaz. When they go full scale and flash blue you know it's a good time to keep an eye on temperature! They're also good for showing which programs are actually putting the GPU to any significant use. Very impressed with Asus customer service and the next machine I buy will likely be an Asus.

 

[Bobapingu]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and I had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue.

That seems to be a rather unlikely explanation, but you could be right. Black mark for Windows if that is the case.

Most people simply ignore those “special folders” and make their own folders for data.

I preferred the old days when there were no default user folders, but some users persisted in saving stuff to C:\

Those special folders should be made fixed. They appear to be intricately linked to OneDrive and the OneDrive backups. Moving them messes the whole thing. It appears to be designed for a single drive system. Hey, it just occurred to me that that's probably why it's called OneDrive. Microsoft really needs to fix this or at least explain clearly how they are meant to be used.

It's easy enough to create your own folders anywhere you like. You just have to remember to not try to move the special folder. I think we've all done that.

 

[New Wrycuda]

A heads up- I was troubleshooting a hardware issue on a new-ish machine and removed the 2nd SSD I had installed. It never booted again, even after reinstalling the SSD. Had to reinstall Windows 11 to fix it. I've never had a system that unrecoverable. So, what happened? I have a lot of large image and video files that I keep on the 2nd SSD and I had moved the special Windows Pictures, Music and Videos directories to that location. You can easily do that under Properties. Apparently when they became inaccessible, Windows put a gun to its head and made the boot device inaccessible as well. So long as you relocate the directories (no need to move the files) before removing the drive, there's no issue.

That seems to be a rather unlikely explanation, but you could be right. Black mark for Windows if that is the case.

Most people simply ignore those “special folders” and make their own folders for data.

I preferred the old days when there were no default user folders, but some users persisted in saving stuff to C:\

Those special folders should be made fixed. They appear to be intricately linked to OneDrive and the OneDrive backups. Moving them messes the whole thing. It appears to be designed for a single drive system. Hey, it just occurred to me that that's probably why it's called OneDrive. Microsoft really needs to fix this or at least explain clearly how they are meant to be used.

Microsoft really should take a peek at the way ChromeOS (OS for ChromeBook) manages Google Drive.

It's operation is almost transparent to the user, and it just appears as an item in the File Manager where you can view or delete items at will. Google Drive also acts as an agent for converting imported documents that are otherwise not supported. I recently used the import function to repair a complex MS-Word file.

It's easy enough to create your own folders anywhere you like. You just have to remember to not try to move the special folder. I think we've all done that.

At least in the early days, users were reluctant to create their own folders.

A customer who was a professional engineer had an office bulging with filing cabinets, yet he had started to save all his documents in the root drive (C which had a limit of 128 files.

 

[Sean Nelson]

A customer who was a professional engineer had an office bulging with filing cabinets, yet he had started to save all his documents in the root drive (C which had a limit of 128 files.

At least he didn't try to cram them all onto the desktop... :-O

 

[New Wrycuda]

A customer who was a professional engineer had an office bulging with filing cabinets, yet he had started to save all his documents in the root drive (C which had a limit of 128 files.

At least he didn't try to cram them all onto the desktop... :-O

Indeed, and even professionals have been known to forget desktop files when backing up.

Another “hack” that I’ve seen a couple of times is alphabetising file names to keep them in order rather than using folders…

aaBook1, aaBook2, bbThesis, etc.

 

[Ruby Rod]

IMHO, creating and using an organized folder and subfolder system is the difference between computer literacy and not.

FWIW, I never use Onedrive, but given the size of my image collection it needs to reside on another drive and it's handy to move the Windows "special" Photos directory, but certainly not essential. Most are probably better off not doing it, even though the Properties window has provisions for both moving it and putting it back to the default location.

 

[New Wrycuda]

IMHO, creating and using an organized folder and subfolder system is the difference between computer literacy and not.

Nearly 40 years ago, before I had ever used PCs, I was invited to inspect a friend’s shiny new computer. I think that it must have been a 286 running DOS. The young computer-head of the family demonstrated WordPerfect and then saved the document.

I asked, “Where did you save it?”

The answer was, (Waving in the general direction of the computer) “In there somewhere*.”

At that point, I knew that it would be an excellent idea to familiarise myself with file systems and directory conventions.

Knowing the details has subsequently served me very well.

.

* In WordPerfect for DOS, you can specify a default directory for documents.