My trusty old PC has worked perfectly for years on Windows 7, which runs from a Samsung Pro EVO 850 256gb SSD drive.
A few months ago I decided to upgrade to Windows 10, but I wanted to do a clean install (I don't like upgrades), which would also allow me to dual boot, so I could continue to use Windows 7 until I was perfectly happy with Windows 10 i.e. all software was installed and working.
To this end, I purchased a new Samsung EVO 840 500gb SSD drive, with the intention of using this in my desktop for a short period, then switching out one of the (slow) 500gb drives from my laptop and using the SSD drive in the laptop. This would hopefully provide more performance to the laptop, which was struggling since upgrading to Windows 10 (clean install again).
Because the original 256gb Pro EVO 850 would remain in my desktop, I had to get Windows 10 onto this "old" drive, so here's what I did:
1. Duplicated the original Pro EVO 850 Windows 7 install onto the new EVO 840 SSD drive.
2. Wiped the original Pro EVO 850 SSD drive (Windows 7 is now on the new 840 SSD drive).
3. Clean install of Windows 10 onto the original Pro EVO 850 SSD drive.
On booting, I was presented with a Windows 10 screen allowing me to choose Windows 7 or Windows 10. Perfect. I have been using this config for a couple of months now and both OS's are working well on the desktop.
I've now finished setting up Windows 10, so want to remove the new EVO 840 SSD drive (contains Windows 7) from my desktop, so I can use it in my laptop. However, when I disconnect the new EVO 840 SSD drive from my desktop, the machine doesn't boot and hangs at the following message:
"Verifying DMI Pool Data".
I've tried using the original Windows 10 iso image (on a DVD) to "repair" Windows 10, but this doesn't seem to have any affect. The only way I can get my desktop to boot is to have the Windows 7 disk connected (new EVO 840 SSD).
To summarise, I have two drives:
1. Original Pro EVO 850 256gb SSD - Windows 10 installed
2. New EVO 840 500gb SSD - Windows 7 installed
With both drives connected, I get a choice of which OS to run and both OS's work fine.
With only drive 1 installed, I'm unable to boot into Windows 10 as it hangs at the Verifying DMI Pool Data message.
I would appreciate any advice on how to overcome this boot issue.
PS. My aim is to copy the Windows 7 SSD drive to an old hard drive and attach this, just in case I ever need to get back to the original Windows 7 install!
Spent a couple of hours last night trying to get my Windows 10 install to boot without having the Windows 7 install disk attached to my desktop.
Tried recreating the MBR etc. as described by a number of web sites, but all this achieved was to cause a "Disk Read Error, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" message to appear after the "Hanging at Verifying DMI Pool Data", whenever I tried to reboot.
Please don't suggest there is an issue with the SSD drive, because there isn't!!!! This is crappy Windows simply not working!
As soon as I plug the Windows 7 drive back in (so both the SSD drives are connected), everything goes back to working perfectly i.e. I can boot into either OS and get NO errors.
So, the issue is clearly with the MBR on the Pro EVO 850 256gb SSD (Windows 10 install).
I need to figure out how to fix this and at the moment this forum is being less than useful
Well, thanks for all the help, not!!!!
I managed to figure this out (partly by luck), so here's some info should anyone else have this issue, which seems to relate specifically to Windows 10.
After trying everything I could think of to boot from the Windows 10 drive, I finally decided to install a second copy of Windows 10 on this drive, in the hope that a fresh install would create an MBR that I could use. So, I booted up from the Windows 10 installation DVD and chose, what I thought was an empty partition on the Windows 10 drive, however, this was labelled as OEM and I wasn't allowed to select it as the destination for the install. I then realised this partition was only 450mb in size! Having done some research, I believe this was the Windows Recovery Partition created as part of the Windows 10 install.
I re-attached the Windows 7 drive and then booted into Windows and removed this small "OEM" partition. I then split the existing Windows 10 partition as it was 4 times larger than required and I needed a blank partition for the new install.
I then shutdown, disconnected the Windows 7 drive and rebooted with only the Windows 10 drive attached and to my surprise it booted with no problem.
It therefore looks like the Windows Recovery Partition was the thing preventing me from booting from this drive when only it was attached to the PC.
