BSOD CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED w/error 0xc000000e on reboot

Good morning Arc. Doing a Rebuild MBR makes a lot of sense.

But I'm unclear on which drive you want to rebuild. I think you're saying the internal drive labelled Valiant should be the one. However, the OS on Valiant is the one from several months ago--it is not the latest running OS and appears not to have been my "C:" drive (user profiles are old, etc.)

Regarding,

But its partition structure is corrupt.
And this corruption (unallocation and conversion to logical of the boot device) is an indication of a malware; a special type of bad malware called bootkit/rootkit.

Is it possible this happened as a result of formatting/deleting the recovery partition on the Valiant drive? I was instructed to do that a week ago (if you dig back to page 3 of this thread)? Or possibly when I botched the Startup Repair yesterday by powering off in the middle of it? It was this latter event that rendered the system unbootable.

Admittedly, I'm no expert on how Windows decides where to find itself when booting, but it would be really good if Windows found itself on the unlabelled external drive which certainly has my latest "C:" drive files (user profile, etc.). Is the partition structure on the unlabelled external drive also corrupted?

If it is at all possible to get the unlabelled external drive to boot up, I could continue working this week. And since I now understand what the original problem was, I can take steps to clone the running OS from the external drive back to an internal drive using something like Partition Wizard. Would it be possible to do that?

Thanks.

EDIT: Going back to the original Disk Management dump (page 2 of this thread), I can see now the following:

C: (unlabelled), 232.00 GB --> external drive (originally thought to be Valiant)
- originally Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, System]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active & Boot]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, None]

V: (Valiant), 232.44 GB --> now known to be an internal drive
- original Healthy (Active, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active & Boot]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Logical, None] <- because we deleted it on page 3 of the thread.

Z: (Zodiac), 232.88 GB --> internal drive
- original Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active]

So if I understand correctly, the original boot order would be find boot loader on Z: (Zodiac) because it was marked "System", then load the OS found on unlabelled external drive because it was marked "Boot" (plus all the other flags).

Now, if I understand correctly, the boot order is find boot loader on unlabelled external drive first partition because it is now marked "System", the load the OS found either on unlabelled external drive second partition marked "Active & Boot" or on V: (Valiant) marked as "Active & Boot". I suspect it is not trying Valiant because, with all three drives connected, or with unlabelled and Zodiac only, the boot fails with the following:
Attachment 87438

Do you think it is possible to use Partition Wizard to patch this boot sequence back to something that gets me running again?

Is it possible this happened as a result of formatting/deleting the recovery partition on the Valiant drive? I was instructed to do that a week ago (if you dig back to page 3 of this thread)? Or possibly when I botched the Startup Repair yesterday by powering off in the middle of it? It was this latter event that rendered the system unbootable.

The Valiant disk is having the system partition of an irregularly increased size, totally wiped up and formatted as logical.

Attachment 87435

It can get this shape in two different ways only. Either you have done it deliberately or it is a bootkit infection. And I dont think that you have done it deliberately. None of the aforesaid actions can do it. So as far as I can see, it was a case of infection.

the OS on Valiant is the one from several months ago--it is not the latest running OS and appears not to have been my "C:" drive (user profiles are old, etc.)

If you dont want this OS installed on Valiant, then better you format the entire HDD. No need to keep a disk with an unwanted OS installed.
Moreover, the formatting will remove the possibility of the existence of the bootkit in that very disk anymore.

But I'm unclear on which drive you want to rebuild.

Me too, specially after reading this post.

• You dont want any of the two 1TB disks to be your boot drive.
• You dont want the unlabelled extrnal HDD to continue as your Boot drive.
• You dont want Valiant to be your boot drive.

Then what remains there is Zodiac. But Zodiac does not have any OS installed on it.

Attachment 87436

So it will not be able to boot from itself.

Can you please be specific which one of the disks have the windows installation that you want to boot from? We need to perform out tasks on that disk.

If it is at all possible to get the unlabelled external drive to boot up, I could continue working this week. And since I now understand what the original problem was, I can take steps to clone the running OS from the external drive back to an internal drive using something like Partition Wizard. Would it be possible to do that?

That might be possible, but will add more trouble there.

As you are unsure how it all happened, as you are not sure which OS installation you want to boot up, the best way would be start afresh.

If you want to start afresh, then ......

1. First choose a disk on which you want to install windows.
2. Format both the other 256 GB disks, the internal one and the external one. Make it sure that none of them contain any Active partition. Set all their active partitions as inactive.
3. Disconnect all the HDDs other than the chosen one. Perform a clean install of windows on it. As you have already upgraded to windows 10, the motherboard already got the digital entitlement; so activation would not be an issue.
4. Add back the other drives.

If I have been in your place, I would have taken this way at this stage.

If you dont want this OS installed on Valiant, then better you format the entire HDD. No need to keep a disk with an unwanted OS installed.
Moreover, the formatting will remove the possibility of the existence of the bootkit in that very disk anymore.

Me too, specially after reading this post.

• You dont want any of the two 1TB disks to be your boot drive.
• You dont want the unlabelled extrnal HDD to continue as your Boot drive.
• You dont want Valiant to be your boot drive.

Then what remains there is Zodiac. But Zodiac does not have any OS installed on it.

I apologize for this confusion and I can appreciate your frustration. Please look at the "EDIT:" I made to my last post above which crossed while you were writing. The recovery partition on Valiant was blown away by me as requested earlier by Axe0. However, even after doing that, the system still booted and ran (although it still had the original problem).

Can you please be specific which one of the disks have the windows installation that you want to boot from? We need to perform out tasks on that disk.

The unlabelled external drive does contain the OS I want. So my first objective would be to get that one to boot up. That would get me to a known, workable (but short-term) state. Then my second objective (later), would be to migrate that OS off the external drive to an internal drive.

Thanks so much.

PhabGuy said:

I apologize for this confusion and I can appreciate your frustration. Please look at the "EDIT:" I made to my last post above which crossed while you were writing. The recovery partition on Valiant was blown away by me as requested earlier by Axe0. However, even after doing that, the system still booted and ran (although it still had the original problem).



The unlabelled external drive does contain the OS I want. So my first objective would be to get that one to boot up. That would get me to a known, workable (but short-term) state. Then my second objective (later), would be to migrate that OS off the external drive to an internal drive.

Thanks so much.

I will consider this current case closed if we can achieve the first objective above. The second step I will do later (maybe next week).

First, I think I need to tell you some basics.

In the Legacy setup like your, a disk that have the OS (windows 10, specially) installed has two partitions. One is System Reserved, of 450 MB and the other is C (or may be any other user defined drive letter).

The System Reserved 450 MB (unlabelled; so not visible in windows explorer) partition is must to be Primary, Active and having the Boot Flag. It contains the bootloader entries only.
The other partition (generally C) contains the OS. It should not be active, does not need the boot flag.

The 450 MB partition boots the computer to the OS (C). That means, The Boot partition (which must be Active) runs the System partition.
Here is a typical example of the disk structure as Partition Wizard sees ....

Attachment 87447
System Reserved is Active and Boot, C is System.

Now, if the boot entries are corrupted, Rebuilding MBR or running startup repair is enough to repair them and can make the computer bootable.

If boot entries are totally missing, rebuilding MBR should be tried. If it is not enough to do the job, run startup repair for three separate times. This will record the boot entries in the disk properly.

*To get back where you were, connect all the disks. You know that the external (unlebelled) disk has the boot loader. So set all the partitions inactive allover all the disks other than this one. Keep this one as active.

Attachment 87450

Now, you have only one disk with an active boot partition.
Now try to boot the computer normally.
If it fails, rebuild MBR of the unlabelled external HDD.
If it fails, run startup repair thrice. It will make the computer bootable again.

To have the permanent solution later on, do it ....

If you want to start afresh, then ......

1. First choose a disk on which you want to install windows.
2. Format both the other 256 GB disks, the internal one and the external one. Make it sure that none of them contain any Active partition. Set all their active partitions as inactive.
3. Disconnect all the HDDs other than the chosen one. Perform a clean install of windows on it. As you have already upgraded to windows 10, the motherboard already got the digital entitlement; so activation would not be an issue.
4. Add back the other drives.

If I have been in your place, I would have taken this way at this stage.

Arc said:

First, I think I need to tell you some basics.
....
To have the permanent solution later on, do it ....

Thanks Arc, I will do these instructions and report back.

No problem mate.

*To get back where you were, connect all the disks. You know that the external (unlebelled) disk has the boot loader. So set all the partitions inactive allover all the disks other than this one. Keep this one as active.
Now, you have only one disk with an active boot partition.
Now try to boot the computer normally.
If it fails, rebuild MBR of the unlabelled external HDD.
If it fails, run startup repair thrice. It will make the computer bootable again.

I have completed the above steps.
NOTE: My free copy of bootable Partition Wizard shows me only 1 disk, even if several are connected. So I had to set the disks inactive one by one.

It wouldn't boot, so I did rebuild MBR, but still not boot. So I installed Win10 DVD and ran Startup Repair three times, each time, Startup Repair said "Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC."

So the system still doesn't boot. The message is: An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that contain an operating system. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.

I appreciate all the help and time you and Axe0 have put into my issue. We have achieved something very important...we now know WHY I couldn't boot without that external drive connected. In my opinion, that is the resolution to this issue.

Now I think it is time to clean the slate and do another clean install, this time a truly clean install. I will pull all the drives out, install a new SSD and install Win10 on that. Then I will reinstall all my applications--I have a detailed list from February. Then I will reinstall some of the original drives and start pulling data back from them. The other drives will stay on the shelf or be used as backups (via the docking station). It will take me two days to get it all running again.

What do you think? Good plan?

PhabGuy said:

Now I think it is time to clean the slate and do another clean install, this time a truly clean install.

That is exactly what you need to do to get rid of this mess. Perfect decision, I would say.

Arc said:

That is exactly what you need to do to get rid of this mess. Perfect decision, I would say.

Done and back in business. A nice new 500 GB SSD holds the operating system (Columbia, "C:") and a new 1 TB HDD replaces Zodiac (Zenith, "Z:"). All my key work tools are re-installed, even Adobe Creative Suite gave me no hassle. I still had the forms REG file from before, so all my forms are back in the system and I'm going client projects again.

This install *did* create a System Reserved partition, but it made it on Z:, not C:. Since it is Win10 Home and can't use BitLocker, I'm wondering why it did it that way. At least, Z: is internal!!

Cheers to you and Axe0 for hanging in there with me.