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#1
BSOD Critical Process Died
Windows has got itself in a mess, possible due to a crash on shutdown. I’ve been trying a vast variety of fixes, to no avail. I’ve attached the minidump, as I cannot run log collector V2 on the repair environment of the installation disk, or Hiren's BootCD, neither of which have powershell.
On boot up it always crashes with “Critical Process Died”
Trying to get to the repair menu also crashes with “Critical Process Died”
Booting with the Windows Install Disk (on USB – shows version 10.0.19041.2006), none of the repair options worked. Startup Repair “couldn’t repair your PC”. The rest needed the admin use/password, but the password was no longer valid.
Using the command prompt tried SFC (after 100% verification gives Windows Resource Protection could not perform requested operation) and DISM errors too.
Ran Chkdsk, and it corrected some errors in the MFT, then failed to log to the event log status 6.
Tried combofix (then discovered it was incompatible), tweaking.com_windows_repair_aio_setup.exe, and other virus cmd line software – all gave “<program> is not compatible”
Booted with Hiren's BootCD and ran a password fixer to get access to the admin account (had downloaded Kalli to use chntpw but wasn’t needed).
Booted with Windows Install Disk and though the admin login now worked none of the options did (System restore gave the error “must specify windows windows installation to restore”, Uninstall quality update gave the error “we ran into a problem and won’t be able to uninstall”). Can’t run eventvwr.
Booted with Hiren's BootCD again, and tried to go back to the previous restore point. It showed it, but the checkbox could not be selected (it doesn’t say it, but maybe that is for the paid version only?).
With Windows Install Disk tried ICACLS on winsxs, but no effect (I did wonder if it was a file attribute problem, and I should do something to free up all windows files, but not quite sure what that route might be yet). Ran chkdsk /r for 2.5 hours, but that came up with nothing untoward. Ran Malwarebytes and it showed nothing untoward either.
Then the MBR got corrupted, so now has to be manually booted into Windows. Tried bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, bootrec /scanos, bootrec /rebuildbcd but no joy. Tried to use bcdedit to create a new one, but I think I may have got the settings wrong (I used the Windows directory as it appeared (drive F:), when maybe I should have used the drive it would normally be at (drive C:).
The MBR is a secondary issue – the main one is how to rebuild windows from the “Critical Process Died” when none of the repair options work.
Just taken the dump file from windows/minidump which shows:
29/01/2023 21:45:20 CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED 0x000000ef ffffad02`79b3c140 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000
ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+3fa1d0 x64 ntoskrnl.exe+3fa1d0
ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+90b1f2 fffff804`21a00000 fffff804`22a46000 0x01046000 0x33c5e414 11/07/1997 07:43:16
Any further ideas gratefully received!