How can I repair or install startup repair/system recovery after BCD corruption?

Solution 1:

Aha! Fixed it!

As I noted in the thread on Microsoft Answers I linked to, there was no entry for the Recovery Environment from bcdedit. There also wasn't one visible from EasyBCD. I did note they were in the registry, but they're shown by GUIDs there - not very navigable.

Thanks to this answer's suggestion of Visual BCD Editor, I was able to see the Recovery Environment entries in a friendly view.

Finally seeing the problem!

Thanks to the multiple runs of Startup Repair and manual repairing of the primary boot option, I had one working primary boot option and two Recovery Environment boot options. The (recovered) one, as seen in the screenshot below, was created during the Startup Repairs.

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As seen in the screenshot below, the RecoverySequence GUID of the primary boot option did not match the GUID of the recovered Recovery Environment (that's a mouthful!). Instead, it pointed to the corrupted Recovery Environment entry. Rather than attempting to link it to the (recovered) entry, I just fixed the original one and deleted the (recovered) one - especially since the (recovered) one has different GUIDs and inheritance settings.

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Fixing the problem!

Before attempting manual repairs, backup the BCD file. This can be done under Store > Backup Store.

1. I linked ApplicationDevice and OSDevice in the original Recovery Environment option to the C: partition. This is where the \Recovery\b9c42ebd-946e-11e0-8a47-f688fd0bc489\Winre.wim file resides, and happens to be my primary OS partition. I've heard it's in a different place on some OEM machines: HP (and possibly others) create their own recovery partition that should be used. Note for anyone else following this: the GUIDs you see will be different.

   
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2. I had to fix the Ramdisk Options (linked to the GUID of the original Recovery Environment) entry: SdiDevice had to be set to type PartitionDevice, 'Drive' C:, blank Path. To be honest, this was based off the DeviceOptions created by Startup Repair and linked to the (recovered) Recovery Environment.

   
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3. I then deleted the DeviceOptions and Windows Recovery Environment (recovered) entries.

   
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4. Reboot, test, enjoy! This fixes Startup Repair on failed startup and Repair Your Computer in the advanced boot options menu (F8 on startup).

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to add a Recovery Environment to a clean BCD store. I assume it would be just adding similar options, as seen in the screenshot.