GARY-PC-Sun_09_01_2019_141912_96.zip
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I am wondering if the entries located in my registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\BCD00000000 might be where the three mysterious boot loader entries are located. Compared to the same entry on my VM it is bigger. Here's an export of the entry:
BCD00000000.zip
The DM log collector was uploaded and it had approximately 15 files.
The V2 is the new log collector.
It was not yet uploaded.
It collects approximately 35 files.
The files were cleaned today so there were no entries in some of the scanned files.
So nothing to troubleshoot in the 15 files.
The BCD was not able to be viewed.
1) In the left lower corner search type: system or system control > open system control panel > on the left pane click advanced system settings
a) > on the advanced tab under startup and recovery > click settings > post an image of the startup and recovery window into the thread
b) > on the advanced tab under performance > click on settings > on the performance options window > click on the advanced tab > under virtual memory > click on change > post an image of the virtual memory window into the thread
2) Open Ccleaner > click windows tab > scroll down to system and advanced > post an image into the thread
Startup and recovery system failure was set to not produce dump files.
So if there were a BSOD related computer problem (drivers, BIOS, hardware) it could be missed.
All windows error reporting and many other files were deleted.
The logs did not display software to make backup images.
There were no restore points.
The RAM appears to be overclocked.
The logs were cleaned today, September 1.
So very little information is available to scan or read.
I saw an entry in my BCD that indicated it was an earlier version of Windows. I used bcdedit /delete {ntldr} /f to delete it. However the 3 unbootable entries still remain when checking use original boot configuration.
If I can only find out where the three entries I get when checking the use original config are stored perhaps all I need to do is delete them. Also keep in mind that even though the first entry among the three seems to indicate it is my default version, the same as the one I see when I don't check the original config button, it will not let me boot so obviously it is different. Even what is written is different between the two.
I am going to pursue some more things. I would suggest that the rest of you can take a break from my problem unless you are as curious as me. Things work just fine the way it is now and always have. Again, curiosity has gotten the better of me.
If these three entries are indeed invalid probably from previous installs then it seems likely that if the boot process uses one of them the info to find the boot manager or whatever is long gone. This would explain the various error messages which all indicate that something needed to boot is not found.
Please post the results from the above steps.
This way there could be information in the logs.
When the troubleshooting has completed you can change or keep them.
Let's just put this on the back burner. All the utilities I ran only show that my BCD has just one Windows 10 bootloader located in my EFI partition. The original config, from what I gather , should be the config when I first installed Windows. It is used to do a clean install for debugging.
Since these three other entries are not in my BCD they must be somewhere else. Checking use original config makes them visible so as I said finding out who is doing this might lead us down the right path. My first thought that msconfig has the entries stored in the Registry or perhaps there is an original config entry in the Registry.
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As I surmised, my problem was not a bad BCD. It was simply that the three invalid entries were probably leftovers from previous installs or inplace upgrades that reared their ugly heads when I checked the Use original boot configuration. These entries might even have been leftover legacy MBR entries prior to converting to GPT/UEFI in the past. For those interested here is how I fixed my problem.
1. In msconfig I went to the General tab and selected Normal Startup.
2. As a result of doing #1 the boot tab contained the three invalid entries which if left as they are were would not let me boot. I clicked on the Apply button to make it permanent. I did not reboot.
3. Since the Delete button was grayed out in the Boot tab I used the program Windows Manager 10 which has a feature that let me delete the three invalid entries.
4. I then restored a copy of my BCD that I previously saved. Let me stress that the BCD has always been valid. The three invalid entries were not inside the BCD. I still would like to know where the heck they came from.
5. I then rebooted and Windows 10 started up and msconfig still looks like it does below. I even have Normal as the default.
I appreciate all the help but I truly believed, and it has be borne out, that debugging the problem as suggested was not necessary.
I realize this is a year and a half later, but I wanted to add some further data towards understanding the perplexing question of where the extra Boot menu items may have come from.
For the last several weeks I've been overhauling several computers at home, updating Windows XP systems to SP3 (yeah, yeah...), upgrading hard drives and adding new ones, completely re-doing my scheduled backups with Macrium Reflect, updating and creating new Macrium Rescue disks, adding the Macrium System Recovery to my boot menu (that's the relevant one!) and adding Windows 10 as dual-boot for my daily-driver Windows 7 laptop.
One of the computers I was working with was an old Win XP machine that had a failing HDD. I had bought and installed a second disk, and by hook or by crook I managed to copy the system and most of the data over onto the new HDD, using Macrium Reflect 7 partition clones and Beyond Compare to copy data files over from a partition that couldn't be cloned. But I didn't take the old HDD out, because I kept finding stuff that hadn't transferred over. Then I swapped the SATA cables on the motherboard to boot from the new disk. I couldn't boot, so I used a Macrium Rescue CD and ran their Rescue Disk utility for fixing Windows boot problems. The Utility could see both the Windows XP on the old HDD and the Windows XP on the new one. I set the new one as the default, and I was able to boot up on the new disk.
Macrium wasn't working right on the new disk, because of a driver file that didn't get copied over. Probably VSS wasn't working when I made the clone of the system partition. Anyway, I reinstalled Macrium on the new HDD, and set about trying to create a Macrium System Recovery boot menu entry. But when I tried to test it, I again was unable to boot into Windows. So I again booted from the Rescue disk, again ran the utility to Fix Windows boot problems, and again, I was able to boot straight into Windows with no boot menu displayed. Tried again to create the Macrium Recovery boot menu entry - same thing, over and over again. Each time, my boot menu would consist of a nonfunctional entry for Windows XP, n+1 nonfunctional entries for Macrium System Recovery (where n was the number of entries that were there on the previous iteration), and one entry that actually worked, for Macrium System Recovery. I must have done this a half a dozen times, googling and searching around my hard drives on each iteration trying to figure out what was wrong.
In the course of this, I discovered the BCD registry entries that you mentioned in an earlier post. All of my boot menu items were there in the registry, many of them looking like they were missing some types of registry information that the others had. I ALSO discovered that I had two copies of the Windows boot manager file, bootmgr - one on each hard disk, along with all of the other boot-related files. Finally, I got a copy of EasyBCD and I could see clearly (after generating the Macrium Recovery boot menu option and before rebooting) that the bootmanager location was missing from the BCD, and most of the boot loader entries had missing information as well.
Evidently when Macrium was trying to add its boot menu item, it couldn't figure out which bootmanager to use, so it left it blank; and when the Macrium Rescue Disk used fixboot or whatever tools it was using to get me back to being able to boot Windows again, it deleted entries from the BCD but not from the registry. I suspect that the "Use original configuration" option is pulling old registry data to populate the BCD, and if the registry data is obsolete, you can end up with nonfunctional boot menu options.
By comparing the information in EasyBCD and the information in the registry, I could identify which registry items needed to go, and I deleted them (yes, I exported them first, just in case). And I deleted the bad menu items from EasyBCD, as well, and pointed the remaining ones to the right places, and I pointed the boot manager to the correct location. And I deleted bootmgr from the old hard drive. And now that machine's boot menu is behaving as it should.
Anyway, if you come back and see this, I hope it helps to demystify some of this. And if not, maybe it will help someone else.
Rebeccah
@rprastein.
This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night sometimes (yes, I do need to get out more). So your posts and updates have been immensely helpful and are much appreciated. Especially when some time has passed. Hence my also necroing this thread lol. Wonderful work in fact on your part.
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