I am unable to boot my computer normally but can do so from Rescue Media. Within the Macrium screen that comes up, I have repeatedly tried to use the "Fix Windows boot problems" and it seems to go through all the steps, but after restarting, it always returns me to a Windows error screen. The computer in question runs Windows 10 and a paid version of Macrium.

Are there any tricks to this process or things I should check before giving up on it?

Thanks!

For starters, what does the error screen say? Fix Boot Problems isn’t able to fix all possible causes of boot problems. Although for that matter, does fix Boot Problems report SUCCESS on all steps, meaning green check marks all the way down?

And what if anything precipitated the boot issue? Any hardware changes, driver changes, Windows update installations?

+x

 

jphughan - 24 May 2023 10:33 PM

For starters, what does the error screen say? Fix Boot Problems isn’t able to fix all possible causes of boot problems. Although for that matter, does fix Boot Problems report SUCCESS on all steps, meaning green check marks all the way down?

And what if anything precipitated the boot issue? Any hardware changes, driver changes, Windows update installations?

Thanks for the reply! I'm just getting back to this and will try to provide more detail.

The only known "precipitating event" is that I put the laptop into a backpack. Didn't actually go anywhere with it, but it was working when stored and then stopped working when I tried starting up again. No other known changes. I opened up the back and did not find any obvious loose connections.

Starting the usual way gives me a blue screen with the message "Recovery: Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. The operating system couldn't be loaded because a critical system driver is missing or contains errors. File: \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\Wdf1000.sys Error code: 0xc0000102.

Starting from the rescue media, I boot using the USB drive containing the media and Reflect 8 starts up. When I click "Fix Windows boot problems", a window shows "Windows 10 Core" on my C drive. After I hit Finish, I get green checks next to "EFI partition found on disk 1", "Removing old BCD", and "Creating BCD for C:\WINDOWS". It asks me "Restart your PC?" I say Yes, and it returns me to the blue screen described above.

I think my next step will be to imag the hard drive using Macrium and the rescue media, but I'd certainly like to get the computer actually working again if possible. If there's anything else I can try to fix the booting, I'm all ears. Thanks!

Have you tried using Redeploy? If there is a critical driver missing, Redeploy may be able to correct the issue.  It all depends on which driver is missing. 

Ok, Fix Boot Problems won’t fix that type of boot problem. It’s designed to fix problems that prevent Windows from even starting to boot, not failures that occur after the boot process has begun as appears to be the case here. ReDeploy can generally address issues around incorrect/missing drivers, but if you haven’t changed any PC hardware or transplanted your Windows environment onto a new PC by restoring one PC’s image onto another, then that’s unlikely to be a good solution either. Also, that WDF1000.sys file appears to be a “Windows Driver Framework” file, not even related to a specific device. That makes me wonder if either a background update may have installed and gone sideways, or else something may have gone wrong with the storage device that is simply manifesting as inability to read that file.

Any chance you have a recent Reflect backup you’d be prepared to restore? If you need to capture data that you’ve updated since the time of your last backup, you can boot into Rescue Media and use that to perform a new backup first, so that after you perform a restore, you can mount that “failed state backup” and extract any required data out of it. If you can’t complete a new backup even when booting into Rescue Media, then that would suggest a hardware issue.

+x

 

jphughan - 31 May 2023 7:49 PM

Ok, Fix Boot Problems won’t fix that type of boot problem. It’s designed to fix problems that prevent Windows from even starting to boot, not failures that occur after the boot process has begun as appears to be the case here. ReDeploy can generally address issues around incorrect/missing drivers, but if you haven’t changed any PC hardware or transplanted your Windows environment onto a new PC by restoring one PC’s image onto another, then that’s unlikely to be a good solution either. Also, that WDF1000.sys file appears to be a “Windows Driver Framework” file, not even related to a specific device. That makes me wonder if either a background update may have installed and gone sideways, or else something may have gone wrong with the storage device that is simply manifesting as inability to read that file.

Any chance you have a recent Reflect backup you’d be prepared to restore? If you need to capture data that you’ve updated since the time of your last backup, you can boot into Rescue Media and use that to perform a new backup first, so that after you perform a restore, you can mount that “failed state backup” and extract any required data out of it. If you can’t complete a new backup even when booting into Rescue Media, then that would suggest a hardware issue.

Thank you for the explanation! I have a Macrium backup from before the booting problem and am imaging the non-booting drive right now (seems to be going ok). Even if the latter doesn't work, the few items missing from the older backup should be available in other places so I should be good data-wise. I'm wondering whether it makes sense to "reset" the PC (using the option of keeping my files) at some point in this process so that I get a clean installation of Windows, or just to restore from the latest available backup.

Resetting the PC is good for its purpose, but it will mean you’ll have to reinstall all of your applications and set up your various preferences again. That might appeal if you decide you want a fresh start, but it probably won’t be faster than restoring from a Reflect backup. But I suppose you could always try it, and if you decide it’s more than you want to deal with, you can still go back and restore a Reflect backup.

+x

 

jphughan - 1 June 2023 2:13 AM

Resetting the PC is good for its purpose, but it will mean you’ll have to reinstall all of your applications and set up your various preferences again. That might appeal if you decide you want a fresh start, but it probably won’t be faster than restoring from a Reflect backup. But I suppose you could always try it, and if you decide it’s more than you want to deal with, you can still go back and restore a Reflect backup.

Ok, thanks! Still deciding what to do but I'll probably try using the Reflect backup and filling in any missing pieces from the image of the non-booting disk (which completed successfully).

Use bcdboot.



Where d is operating system volume, E is efi volume, you have to assign a drive letter.  If you aren't familiar with diskpart and using the command line, there are how to articles on the web, Dell has one I learned this from.

The article also has examples of an MBR disk, above is for EFI.