Auto Repair loop

Hi Windows geniuses! I've reached the end of my knowledge base, so now turning to you all for help.

My daughter's PC was off the other day. Unsure if it was turned off, or if there was a power outage.

Upon turning it back on she found it was struck in an auto repair loop. I had a look and none of the auto options work. I turned off the auto repair function and on booting get a 0xc00000f error.

I chased my tail for a while trying to work out why the EFI partition was missing. Turns out there is none because it's an MBR disk (not sure why....).

In Diskpart I can see there's 2 partitions. The main partition and a 579Mb System Reserve partition.

The main partition still has all the data on it. Although I couldn't pull the Windows product key off using ProduKey.

Bootrec /fixmbr seems to complete successfully.

Bootrec /fixboot gives me an "Access denied" error.

I'm now at the end of my knowledge. I found a few suggestions to fix it but they all seem to be in relation to GPT disks.

Any suggestions?

Do you have a bootable USB stick and an image you can restore?

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums


Open a CMD window as administrator and type:

diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the main drive. Is there a * on the GPT column?)
exit (to exit diskpart)

For your licence information,use either Powershell or Command and type in---slmgr /dlv.

Megahertz said:

Is there a * on the GPT column[/COLOR]?)
exit (to exit diskpart)

Nope.

wiganken said:

Do you have a bootable USB stick and an image you can restore?

I have no image of this system.

joeandmarg0 said:

For your licence information,use either Powershell or Command and type in---slmgr /dlv.

Slmr commands don't work. I assume they're not part of the Windows RE environment?

Could you confirm the command typed in was---slmgr /dlv---and NOT ---slmr---as given by you.

joeandmarg0 said:

Could you confirm the command typed in was---slmgr /dlv---and NOT ---slmr---as given by you.

Can confirm. Typo here.

I did find that the command runs from the System32 directory. However, I end up with an 0x80041010 error.

- - - Updated - - -

I've just done a fresh install on a new drive and everything wotks fine. So it's either a drive fault or an issue with the existing Windows installation.

Do you have a System partition?
Open a command prompt. Type the code below:
diskpart
list disk (take note of your drive number n)
select disk n (change n with the drive number you found above)
list part (It will list all the drive partitions. If you have a System partition, take note of your System partition number x, if not type exit twice )
select part x (change x with the System partition number you found above)
assign letter t
list vol (make sure Windows is C: and System is T:)
exit (to exit diskpart)
bcdboot C:\Windows /s T: /f BIOS
exit (to close CMD window)

I've tried cloning the old drive to the new drive... same problem, as expected.

About to fire up Hirens and see if I can get the registry hive to open. Not expecting a great outcome.

- - - Updated - - -

Megahertz said:

Do you have a System partition?

I have two partitions.

Partition 1 is the System Reserve partition. In the recovery environment this is assigned drive letter C:.

Partition to is the Windows partition. This is assigned D:.

If I'm following your instructions correctly, you want me to assign the System Reserve (C:) to T:. And I'm assuming I need to change the Windows partition (D:) to C:. ?


If I do that, the bcdboot command tells me it has worked successfully.

But upon reboot, the error remains and the partition dtive letters have reverted back.

Is it a Win 10 32 bits?
How big is System Reserve partition?

Did you read the remark?
list vol (make sure Windows is C: and System is T:)

If Windows is D and System is C:
bcdboot D:\Windows /s C: /f BIOS