Q: How do I remove Win10 from a drive I can’t boot with?

Q. My computer has an MSI A75-G41 motherboard with an AMD A10-5800K APU. It has two SSDs installed and is running Win7 Home Premium. 

I downloaded the Win10 update, and it came up with an error message: ‘see Memory_Management.’ It would start, but in less than a minute it would come up with this message and try to reboot again. 

It eventually got past that error but then popped up an error stating that ‘Boot Mngr’ (or something similar) was missing. I downloaded Win10 to a flash drive and tried reinstalling that way; it didn’t help.

How do I remedy this? Or how do I remove Win10 from a drive I can’t boot with?

A. It sounds like the SSD drivers got mangled in the upgrade — or they were incompatible from the start.

I suggest you boot your system from your Win7 Recovery or Repair disc and restore the last system image or backup you made before trying the upgrade. (You did make a backup, right?)

Next, I’d check with MSI and/or the OEM of your SSDs to get the latest SSD/chipset drivers — ideally, ones that are specifically stated to be Win10-compatible. If no Win10-specific updates are available, install the most-recent suite of pre-Win10 drivers for your PC model.

Now make a fresh system image or complete backup.

You’re ready to try the upgrade to Win10 again. With a Win10-compatible SSD driver, your update should proceed normally.

(Originally published on Windows Secrets on Thursday, September 2 2015.)

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