Issues due to having two windows 8 installations - yes I am an idiot

[ppilot]

So I am building a new HTPC and was trying to speed up the process last night(all my remaining parts were coming in today and I will be out of town this weekend). Basically I was trying to use a move an old Vista installation over to an SSD drive and then upgrade to Windows 8 pro to get WMC. After having issues cloning the boot partition, I got the genius idea of just installing Vista from scratch using my new Windows 8 build. So I attached the new SSD, initalized it and started the installation without a problem. Everything went smoothly until the I upgraded the Vista Installation to Windows 8 pro (same as the existing OS on a different SSD), where I had to choose between the two at the booth screen and I chose the new installation to make sure WMC was ready to go.

Thinking all was fine, I shut down my computer and removed the SSD with the new Windows 8 pro install. Next startup my MB (P8Z77-V LK) didn't recognize my primary SSD (wasn't showing up in the SATA profile in the BIOS). After moving cables around to different SATA ports I was finally able to get to the boot screen.

However this is what I have to select every time.


I tried to do a repair and a refresh in the advanced options screen shown above and I got the following error.


So now I am at the point where I can access the the original windows 8 installation but it always goes to that OS selection screen and it is much slower then it used to be. From a hardware stand point I thought it was weird that some of my SATA ports would stop working and now when I shutdown, the power light stays on and the CPU fan keeps running.

Will I have to do a clean install to fix this? Thanks for any help!

 

[Raxiel]

Assuming I'm understanding correctly, your main rig boots slower now you removed the second SSD with a second windows 8 installation (with the intention of putting that second SSD in the HTPC) right?

This is just a guess, but just removing the 'second' installation from the boot manager might do the trick, here is one guide for 7 which I used in the past to remove W8 CP from a 7/8 dual boot:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2676-bcdedit-how-use.html

There is also this which talks about a gui option but I only skimmed it because I'm not familiar with that method.

By the way, since the boot loader for both installations is on your primary SSD, I'm guessing it won't actually boot when the rest of the parts arrive, so that will almost certainly require a repair from the installation media.

 

[ChronoDetector]

You can right click on Computer, go to Properties, click on Advanced Settings, click on the Advanced tab and go to the Start Up and Recovery section and click on the Settings button. When the new window opens, select your default Windows 8 operating system and unclick the Time to display list of operating systems should disable that OS boot selection screen at startup.

 

[ppilot]

Thanks for the advice!.... after messing around with this for a while I just decided to back everything up and do clean install. So far everything seems to be working fairly well.