Windows Boot Manager not on boot drive

Trotter

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I'm not even sure how the hell THIS happened but here I am. My boot drive is my M.2 SSD, but somehow the Windows Boot Manager ended up on my games' SSD instead. I have to leave the SSD as the first boot device and my M.2 as the second of I get a black screen telling me that the MBR is missing and to hit F1 to boot from floppy.

I have done some research but either I'm not phrasing it correctly or the results have been over my head. Any help in how to get the WBM onto my C: would be greatly appreciated.
 
Did this happen all of a sudden (your Boot Mgr got moved) or is this a new install?

I've found the easiest way to make sure everything gets setup with the correct boot files on the desired drive is to do the install initially with ONLY the boot drive connected. Once the OS is installed and booting correctly, then connect secondary drives.
 
New install, or should I say a new reinstall. I forgot to disconnect the other drives when doing the install apparently.

Any way to move/copy it to the correct drive?
 
Can't you use whatever your installation media is and then use the repair windows link. It comes up somewhere near the beginning of the install process. Disconnect any other drives if you can before using that function.
 
It's the second box that comes up after you select your installation language. Bottom left of that box you should see "Repair my computer."
 
If it's still a clean install, reinstall it. Nothing to lose. Of course after putting the storage devices in order this time.

Otherwise, remove the unwanted drive and repair the Windows in the M.2 with means like a boot disk or USB drive. After that connect the boot-unwanted drive thru external connect and remove the boot partition. You probably know how to do that. Then connect it beck internally.
 
I finally fixed this issue. I tried repairing my Windows installation but none of the options let me do what I needed to do, which was to reconstruct the boot manager on C: drive.

After some more searching I found a forum thread with this exact issue and a simple solution. Well, simple in execution but I had never seen it before. I will quote the solution:
You can open an Administrative command prompt and type the command below to place boot files in the C partition. Make sure and put spaces where indicated or copy and paste the commands.

bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

Then shut your system down and disconnect the other drive. During reboot, make sure drive 0 is set as the primary boot device. The system should now boot normally but you may not have recovery options available. So before you shut the system down you might run the command below in case you need the info, it should show the path to the recovery tools so save the listing.
https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-boot-manager-on-wrong-drive.222903/#post-678975

I did what was posted and WHAM it worked. Once I had rebooted a couple of times without the other drives connected I went ahead and shut down and replaced the drive that had the old boot manager on it as it had been causing me some problems, as well as replacing my SATA cables with some black latching ones.
 
Good news and well done for coming back and telling us what worked, so many don't do that.
 
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