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So as the title suggests, I removed my main drive from the laptop, preventing any Ubuntu installation files from getting there and also data loss. But joke’s on me because I can no longer boot to windows after reinstalling my ssd…

I will go step by step on how I proceeded.

  1. Turned laptop off and removed ssd
  2. Plugged bootable usb and external drive.
  3. Opened bios settings and changed from Intel RST to AHCI
  4. Booted usb and installed ubuntu on external drive with no issues, it boots and works fine
  5. Turned laptop off, disconnected external drive, reinstalled the ssd and changed back AHCI to RST (yes i need to look into permanently making it AHCI)
  6. Windows won’t boot, gave it a few tries but still nothing. Startup repair is of no use and Windows just will not boot…
  7. Tried plugging external drive and booting to linux (after doing the whole storage change ordeal), no issues and I can see my ssd recognized by linux.

What the hell did I do wrong and is there anything I can do to not have to reinstall windows please? I know the ssd is not damaged because it can be recognised by linux, but I have no clue what’s happening.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thank you beforehand & yes I am a noob

John Paul
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1 Answers1

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First: are you using an old system with a BIOS for firmware, or UEFI? This sounds like a UEFI problem. UEFI firmware stores in NVRAM a list of boot targets. That list was likely updated when you installed Ubuntu on the external drive.

In order to boot from your original drive, try using whatever your system has for a one-time boot selection option. Some systems invoke this via <F12>.

--klode

klode
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