I added a second NVMe drive and now Z8G4 does not boot anymore

[PeterDorr2]

The WS I bought second hand had a 250 GB NVMe with an illegal copy of win 11 installed.
I added a 2 TB Samsung 970 NVMe and installed a legitimate copy of Win 11 on it.

When I boot I get two options to boot Windows 11, the illegal and the legal version.

Now I took out the 250 GB and replaced it with another 2 TB Samsung and all of a sudden the PC won't boot anymore to windows, it cannot find the OS.

I tried changing the boot order in the Bios but no luck.

Any suggestion what to do? 

[DGroves]

remove all drives EXCEPT for the drive that will be the boot drive

reinstall the legit win 11, however during the setup when it asks/shows which drive to install to REMOVE THE EXISTING PARTITIONS, then simply click the next button (do not manually create partitions, let windows do this)

after windows is installed visit the HP site and install the necessary drivers

if using a win 11 image created from the MS website, it will auto select a UEFI windows install during the setup section

after windows is installed, install the sec nvme drive, and using disk management select it and again remove existing partitions then create a new single (basic) partition and format it as  NTFS

[PeterDorr2]

Thanks a lot for your extensive explanation. I really appreciate this.

I have spend the last 2 days installing the WS tinking I could just "tell" it to boot from the new 2 TB drive instead f the old one.

I really do not want to reinstall the whole thing from scratch again. If your method appears to be the only solution, I just stick with what I have and leave the small disk in only to be able to boot the machine.

It's totally unclear to me why the changed boot order in the Bios does not take care of this issue but I'll manage it.

It's not a huge deal although missing the 2TB fast storage will be a pity.

Again thanks for your reply,

Peter

[PeterDorr2]

It was easier then expected.

you need to create an UEFI partition on the new nvme drive. Then use a partition manager to copy the content from the old nvme to the nwe and Bob’s your uncle.

Took me quite some time to come to this solution but the actual proces was less then 10

minutes without any data loss.

i hope some benefits from this solution.