Windows 10 boot problems, pls help

[homerdog]

Just followed the guide here on how to get around "access denied" when I try /fixboot and failed horribly. Wasn't sure which to do so I did the little empty one first which failed then I tried the next with a different letter and failed. Decided to hook the HDD up and just boot into windows but not only won't it boot with the HDD connected it won't even boot to the USB with it hooked up.

Getting ready to panic and do a reinstall saving data, I'm just out of ideas.

Since you can't boot into Windows, can you put the SSD in a different computer and see if it's GPT or MBR?

As long as the Windows partition is intact and the disk is GPT this should be fixable, but I understand just backing up data and reinstalling Windows. That will definitely work.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Weirdness. I booted to reinstall and had just gotten past the "do you have a registration key" window when I saw your post. I backed out quickly to the repair screen planning to go to command prompt to use diskpart to see if it was GPT or MBR but I accidentally hit "Boot repair" and for some reason its attempting repairs.

The HDD is disconnected and she's been working on the repair for over 7 minutes so I'm just gonna let her take her time doing what she's doing and go play with the dogs in the pool for a bit. Big thanks for the help!!

 

[homerdog]

Weirdness. I booted to reinstall and had just gotten past the "do you have a registration key" window when I saw your post. I backed out quickly to the repair screen planning to go to command prompt to use diskpart to see if it was GPT or MBR but I accidentally hit "Boot repair" and for some reason its attempting repairs.

The HDD is disconnected and she's been working on the repair for over 7 minutes so I'm just gonna let her take her time doing what she's doing and go play with the dogs in the pool for a bit. Big thanks for the help!!

Cool. If that doesn't work you'll definitely have to check and see how the disk is partitioned. MBR requires legacy BIOS, GPT requires UEFI.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Just followed the guide here on how to get around "access denied" when I try /fixboot and failed horribly. Wasn't sure which to do so I did the little empty one first which failed then I tried the next with a different letter and failed. Decided to hook the HDD up and just boot into windows but not only won't it boot with the HDD connected it won't even boot to the USB with it hooked up.

Getting ready to panic and do a reinstall saving data, I'm just out of ideas.

Read some of the comments in the article you linked. It seems to be hit and miss with alot of folks, though thought one comment seems interesting. I think it's a matter of identifying the correct partitions (and type MBR, GPT) and is using the proper commands. Not easy but after this is done you should be a "pro".

i would be very cautious about following this advice. anytime you format a drive make sure you know what drive you are formatting. I never did see Kapil respond to a question asked as to what is the EFI drive. in fact I never saw Kapil respond to any questions really. I only saw responses to replies that “worked”. again, make sure you are formatting the right drive or else you might lose data
...
so I was a little premature in my comment above. i was able to follow the instructions provided while in front of the affected computer and was able to determine the efi volume. These instructions were pretty much spot on except I still got the “access denied” error when running “bootrec /fixboot” I ran the “bootrec /rebuildbcd” and it worked. upon reboot my windows 10 started. thanks for posting this

 

[homerdog]

Read some of the comments in the article you linked. It seems to be hit and miss with alot of folks, though thought one comment seems interesting. I think it's a matter of identifying the correct partitions (and type MBR, GPT) and is using the proper commands. Not easy but after this is done you should be a "pro".

The part about it being dangerous is true which is why I say to go into diskpart in the recovery environment and figure out what the drive letters for the volumes are before even thinking about formatting anything. I can't recall if the EFI partition even gets a letter by default. I know it doesn't in Windows.

But once you're sure, formatting the EFI partition should be okay since it doesn't work anyway. If he's keeping data on the EFI partition he is an absolute madman.

Once EFI is gone, https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/restore-efi-partition-windows-10-8523.html

2. Run the commands below to shrink a partition for unallocated space:

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk # ( Select the disk where you want to add the EFI system partition.)
• list partition
• select partition # (Select the partition which you plan to shrink.)
• shrink desired=100 (Shrink the selected partition by 100MB.)

3. Run the following commands to create the EFI system partition with the unallocated space:

• create partition efi size=100
• format quick fs=fat32
• assign letter=S (You may replace “S” with other letters which are not already used.)
• exit

4. Use the command below to copy the boot files from the Windows partition to the EFI system partition and create the BCD store in it:

• bcdboot C:\windows /s S: (“C” is the drive letter of the system partition and “S” is the drive letter you assign to the EFI partition.)
• exit

5. Restart your computer.

Maybe you won't have to do step 2. And like always this is only for GPT/UEFI.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I should mention that I still have her original install on the HDD as well as the clone image I transferred it over on. She won't lose that much worst case.

Thanks again for all the help but I'm gonna go make some german shepherds splash around in a pool and be all silly/happy with 'em and touch grass for a bit. Literally touch grass, I pick clovers and get knocked down by the dogs a lot but it's all good fun. If I turn to see if startup repair is working one more time I might hurt my neck, gonna let it go for a bit and let it do it's thang.

 

[digitalwanderer]

She's toying with me, this isn't just regular troubleshooting this is a problem that seems to be fighting me back just to spite me!

Got up to play with doggos, saw this:



There's a cursor blinking on the white bar on the bottom

 

[homerdog]

She's toying with me, this isn't just regular troubleshooting this is a problem that seems to be fighting me back just to spite me!

Got up to play with doggos, saw this:

View attachment 11681

There's a cursor blinking on the white bar on the bottom

Whatever you do you should check if the SSD is MBR or GPT. Even if you decide to reinstall Windows or clone it again, you need to know this to make sure this doesn't happen again because:
A) You don't want to do a clean install on a legacy MBR drive
B) If you try to clone again, it will fail again if you don't make sure the source and target have the same partition table.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

In addition to what @homerdog said, I get this screen sometimes when I restore the entire c: drive from an Acronis backup. I just follow the instructions and insert my Windows 10 install disk and repair the drive. It will usually fix any detected issues (MBR or GPT) and usually works fine afterwards.

You never really know when something will go wrong and is one reason why I perform auto weekly C: drive backups. Games are installed on other drives to keep OS drive as data free as possible.

 

[homerdog]

In addition to what @homerdog said, I get this screen sometimes when I restore the entire c: drive from an Acronis backup. I just follow the instructions and insert my Windows 10 install disk and repair the drive. It will usually fix any detected issues (MBR or GPT) and usually works fine afterwards.

I wonder why that happens.

The reason I stopped using Acronis for cloning is that it will always set up the target drive with the same type of partition table that the system Acronis is running on has. The problem was, a lot of the drives I would clone were old and thus MBR. When I cloned them with Acronis on my modern computer, the target drive would be GPT (like my computer) and thus it would never be able to boot since the source was MBR. There is no way to change this in modern versions of Acronis except to make an Acronis rescue media, boot to it in Legacy mode, and do the clone from there which is a GIANT pain in the ass and still won't work on a new computer that doesn't support legacy BIOS at all. Macrium Reflect just doesn't have this problem, and it is free. What a stupid problem for Acronis to have, where the most obvious use case (cloning an old drive to a new SSD) doesn't work. Even worse, Acronis used to have the option to choose the partition table of the target drive and they took it away in an update

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm feeling cursed. Did the 3 step fixboot thing and it said denied then when I rebooted my ssd was just gone. Rebooted to bios and it wasn't showing up. I'm swapping around SATA inputs and now it won't even boot to the USB.

I'd say I'm panicking but I'm well beyond that. "Resigned to the inevitable" is more aprapo.

 

[Davros]

Games are installed on other drives to keep OS drive as data free as possible

I do that as well, If something goes wrong with windows you can format/replace the drive without having to re install all your games, if you get a new pc you can put the games drives in it and most of the time the games work fine.
any games that rely on registry entries that are only created during install can go here : https://www.regfiles.net

 

[homerdog]

I'm feeling cursed. Did the 3 step fixboot thing and it said denied then when I rebooted my ssd was just gone. Rebooted to bios and it wasn't showing up. I'm swapping around SATA inputs and now it won't even boot to the USB.

I'd say I'm panicking but I'm well beyond that. "Resigned to the inevitable" is more aprapo.

Can you try the SSD in another computer?

 

[Deleted member 2197]

I'm feeling cursed. Did the 3 step fixboot thing and it said denied then when I rebooted my ssd was just gone. Rebooted to bios and it wasn't showing up. I'm swapping around SATA inputs and now it won't even boot to the USB.

I'd say I'm panicking but I'm well beyond that. "Resigned to the inevitable" is more aprapo.

From my post above did you try what the person said after they were denied:

I still got the “access denied” error when running “bootrec /fixboot” I ran the “bootrec /rebuildbcd” and it worked. upon reboot my windows 10 started. thanks for posting this

 

[digitalwanderer]

Can you try the SSD in another computer?

Yeah but first I popped the mobo battery out and am gonna let it sit a while before I put a fresh one in. It's old and I've had luck with this before when everything seemed to be going weird.

From my post above did you try what the person said after they were denied:

I currently can't boot to anything.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Going cheat I think and pull out the spare old PC, her mobo is acting whack.

 

[homerdog]

Going cheat I think and pull out the spare old PC, her mobo is acting whack.

If you have a USB enclosure, you can put the SSD in that if it makes things easier. You can do all your troubleshooting over USB so you can easily plug it into another computer etc. I do this often and it saves a lot of time not having to mess with SATA or M.2.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I think I messed up my recovery USB goofing around as its booting to the same error screen on a different system. Making a new one.

 

[digitalwanderer]

New usb still don't wanna fix it, booted up to an old IDE HDD and got it viewable/tweakable in windows. Help.

Disk 0 HDD, 1 SSD

 

[homerdog]

Right click on Disk 1, go to Properties and the Volumes. Is it GPT or MBR? I assume since it has an EFI partition that it is GPT but we don't know what your cloning softare did.