I recently had to remove a drive from my computer to help a friend with theirs, and now I'm facing issues reinstalling Windows 10 on my own system. It seems like Windows installs necessary files across multiple drives, which might be causing the problem since I removed one. I've downloaded the Windows installation media onto a USB and tried to use it but keep getting an error saying, "we couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one". This happens on both my SSD and HDD. I've also tried various boot and repair options, but nothing seems to work. I'm at a loss here; any advice on how to handle this without wiping my files?
2 Answers
It sounds like you're dealing with a bit of a tricky situation there. Windows usually doesn't install itself on all drives, but it can drop some boot files on other drives if they have an EFI partition. If that's what's causing the issue, you might want to make sure there aren't any remnants on your drives that could be causing the installer to fail. Maybe try creating a bootable USB with a different tool just to see if that helps. Good luck!
You might want to back up your important files just in case. A good option is to use a live Ubuntu USB to access your files without booting into Windows. After copying your data to an external drive, you can clean your disk using diskpart and then try reinstalling Windows fresh. Just be careful not to clean the disk before your backup!
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