I was using another drive with a Windows 10 installation as a test environment. After I wrapped up my testing, I decided to wipe that drive to use it purely for storage. My main boot drive is DISK 0. While trying to delete all partitions on DISK 1 using diskpart, I encountered an error stating "delete is not allowed on the current boot..." for the primary partition, even though it wasn't related to the drive I was using. After researching, I thought I could delete the partition by unchecking the "Automatically manage paging file" option and setting it to "No paging file." When I rebooted after making these changes, my Windows 11 system went straight to recovery mode. Can anyone suggest a fix for this issue?
2 Answers
It seems you might have accidentally disabled a system-managed paging file that Windows needs to boot up, even if it was set on DISK 1. It’s possible Windows had some critical boot files on there that are now causing the recovery loop. Try reconnecting DISK 1 and see if your system boots up again. If it does, set a new paging file on DISK 0 before attempting to clean DISK 1. If that doesn't work, create a bootable USB, boot into WinRE, and use `bcdedit` to check the boot entries or rebuild the BCD with: `bootrec /fixboot`, `bootrec /scanos`, and `bootrec /rebuildbcd`. Good luck!
Before you go through all those bootable USB steps, check if booting into a recovery environment allows you to access the command prompt. From there, you might be able to manage the paging file settings directly using commands. Just remember, handling disk options can be tricky—always back up your important data first.
So if I reconnect Disk 1, do you think it will fix things without losing any data? I'm nervous about messing things up even more.