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WinRE Loop - /fixmbr - access denied
I'm running Windows 10, I don't know the build but I'm pretty good keeping up with the updates. The machine is a Dell Precision M6800 there are 2 physical drives in the machine, an SSD for C & a magnetic for D with 16GB of memory.
Windows crashed due to a H/W error, was doing a WinRE & crashed again. Now it's in the infinite WinRE loop. I know my C: drive (Volume 2 currently assigned D:) is intact, the Windows & Windows\System directory looks ok.
I've tried scannow, the analysis runs but I get "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"
I've done a chkdsk which runs fine.
I know the SAM is good because I'm prompted with the 2 administrator ID, I select one of them & successfully authenticate
After reading various forums and trying different things I somehow got to the point where WinRE reassigns drive letters which I've read in some cases this is normal:
After WinRE tells me it can't continue I can get to a command prompt, do a diskpart and see (combination of list volume & list partition) :
Volume 0 G:, is my DVD
Volume Ltr Label FS Size Status Info Part Type Size Offset
Volume 1 C Recovery NTFS 499mb Healthy <none> 1 Recovery 499mb 1024kb
Volume 2 D <blank> NTFS 475GB Healthy <none> 4 Primary 475gb 616mb
Volume 3 E <blank> NTFS 553mb Healthy <none> 5 Recovery 553mb 476gb
Volume 4 <blank> FAT32 100mb Healthy Hidden 2 System 100mb 500mb
Volume 5 F <blank> NTFS 931GB Healthy ***** Not on Disk 0 this is D in real life **
** Partition 3 is not a volume *** 3 Reserved 16mb 476GB
What I am pretty sure happened is that the original WinREs caused by the hardware problem some how wasted the EFI partition. I attempted to use bootrec to fix it, /rebuildbcd worked, then /fixmbr & I got an access denied.
After digging it looks like I need to rebuild the EFI partition which should correct the /fixmbr access denied error. Up until now I haven't destroyed anything. I'm not sure which is my EFI partition, I think it's the one formatted FAT32. I'm a tad bit nervous about formatting something I am not 100% confident is what I want to format. I'm a bit concerned about WinRE relabeling the volumes after everything is fixed.
Can someone help outline the steps I need to follow to get the machine to run my current installation of windows again? I know how to get to an X: prompt from WinRE, I have a bootable USB & know how to disable EFI, boot from it & get to an X: prompt, I also have a windows 10 DVD.
Do I need to go into diskpart & fix the volume labels after the the /fixmbr issue is resolved?
Should I disable WinRE after performing the above steps? If so please let me know how to do that
Does anyone know what partitions 3, 4 & 5 are?
Thanks folks