Total Boot Failure After Removing Second SSD - Win 10

Wait a minute. The startup repair efforts made so far have revealed

The operating system couldnt be loaded because the digital signature of a file or one of its dependencies couldn't be verified.

File:\Windows\system32\winload.exe

Error code: 0xc000428

I guess we could have told from "winload.exe" it's MBR.

The issue is error code 0xc000428. This has happened to others:

Windows 10: The digital signature for this file couldn't be verified

There has been a webpage set up on fixing the error by an MVP:

[FIX] Error 0xc0000428, The Digital Signature For This File Couldn’t Be Verified

At the very least the part about temporarily disabling Driver Signature Enforcement seems to be worth a try.

OK. If there is no mention of UEFI in BIOS, then that can't be the problem.

(1) With just the primary plugged in, let's be sure the System Reserved partition (Data) is the only Active partition. In a Legacy install, there must be only one per HDD, the one that holds the boot files. Then, try BCDBoot this way...

Volume 0 G DVD-ROM 0B

Volume 1 C Data NTFS Partition 100MB

Volume 2 E OS NTFS Partition 237GB

Volume 3 F NTFS Partition 860MB Hidden

Volume 4 D ESD-USB FAT32 Removable 14GB

DiskPart <<<Enter DiskPart

List Vol <<<Should look same as above

Select Volume 1 <<<Select System Reserved (Data)

Active <<<Make it Active (but it already is)

Select Volume 2 <<<Select the Windows partition

Inactive <<<Make it Inactive

Select Volume 3 <<<Select the Recovery partition

Inactive <<<Make it Inactive

Exit <<<Exit DiskPart

BCDBoot  E:\Windows  /s  C:  /f  BIOS

That specifically tells BCDBoot to put the Legacy (BIOS) boot files into Data instead of letting it default. (But it did look like they probably already are there). I hope that does it. Good luck.

(2) Try what Volume Z suggested about temporarily disabling Driver Signature Enforcement. Then, as Kapil Arya said in the article, try to recover a winload.exe that has a valid signature.

(3) questions_ would be next.

Some udpates...and a clue?

(1) Everything checked out and was marked appropriately. I performed BCDBoot  E:\Windows  /s  C:  /f  BIOS . The command reported to be successful. I rebooted but no improvement/change.

(2) From the link from Volume_Z, I tried "FIX 2 – Disable Driver Signature Enforcement Temporarily"

I booted from the disc (not the USB drive) and it threw me into the options, one of them being "7) - Disable driver signature enforcement"

I chose that option and got:

Your PC/Device needs to be repaired

The operating system couldn't be loaded because a critical system driver is missing or contains errors.

File:\Windows\system32\drivers\wd\WdBoot.sys

Error code: 0xc0000102

You'll need to use recovery tools. If you don't have any installation media...

Try these commands that also apply to a Legacy installation...

BootRec /FixMBR

BootRec /FixBoot

Notes:

FixMbr: Writes the master boot record of the system partition using the

           master boot record compatible with Windows. This operation

           does not overwrite the existing partition table.

FixBoot: Write a new boot sector onto the system partition using the

          boot sector compatible with Windows.

I tried BootRec /FixMBR which completed successfully. However, the boot response was the same.

I then tried BootRec /FixBoot , but it said that access is denied. Do I need some switches to be more specific?