Windows 8 EFI boot issue
I've got a simular problem as described in How can I repair the Windows 8 EFI Bootloader?, but with some different details.
When I tried to change the bootsequence of my harddisks (of which 1 SSD) in the BIOS (system=Medion Akoya P5306 F), I got the following error when I tried booting from the (previously perfect booting) SSD:
Your PC needs to be repaired
The boot configuration data for your pc is missing or contains errors
File: \EFI\Microsoft\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f
When I booted from the other HDD, the SSD is visible in the Windows Explorer, but unaccessible. Auto repair using the Win8 support disk is also unable to fix the problem.
Using this link link, I tried
bootsect /nt60 ALL /mbr
bcdboot c:\windows
Went ok, but no solution, since now the message was:
Your PC needs to be repaired
The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \Windows\system32\winload.efi
Error code: 0xc000000f
Again, auto repair is unable to fix the problem. Then I tried the solutions provided in BootMgr is missing, usual fixes don't work.
bootrec /fixmbr
The operation completed successfully.
bootrec /fixboot
The operation completed successfully.
bootrec /scanos
Scanning all disks for Windows installations.
Please wait, since this may take a while...
Successfully scanned Windows installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully.
bootrec /rebuildbcd
Scanning all disks for Windows installations.
Please wait, since this may take a while...
Successfully scanned Windows installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully.
So, no Windows installation is found...
Then I tried something myself, given the error message: I copied X:\Windows\System32\winload.efi to C:\Windows\System32
This seemed to have some effect, because now the message was:
Your PC needs to be repaired
The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because the HAL is missing or contains errors.
File: \Windows\system32\hal.dll
Error code: 0xc000000f
So, I copied X:\Windows\System32\hal.dll to C:\Windows\System32, but now it's complaining about a missing Cl.dll. Since I'm not sure what I'm doing (duh...) I stopped this manual copying.
Also tried
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows
Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.
...without luck.
I then tried some of the proposals from this link:
bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup
The operation completed successfully.
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /rebuildbcd
Still no Windows installations. And although the bootrec indicated success, no C:\boot\BCD file was created!
So finally I ended up at How can I repair the Windows 8 EFI Bootloader?
I assigned B: to the FAT32 partition:
diskpart
select vol 3
assign letter=b:
list volume
Volume #### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
----------- --- ------- ----- --------- ------- ------- ------
Volume 0 E Win8 UDF DVD-ROM 4314 MB Healthy
Volume 1 D NTFS Partition 167 GB Healthy
Volume 2 Herstel NTFS Partition 300 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 3 B FAT32 Partition 99 MB Healthy Hidden
B: contains EFI\Microsoft\Boot (as does C:) And this is the location where the BCD file got rebuild, given the timestamp.
bcdboot c:\Windows /l nl-NL /s b: /f ALL
(nl-NL: yes, I'm Dutch)
Still, no solution. At startup it keeps complaining about the missing Cl.dll.
I'm running out of options and ideas. And I got stuck trying to understand the "Windows and GPT FAQ"
So, who has any bright ideas?
Also, any ideas to just access the SSD and backup the data would be fine!
If I access the C:\Users directory from the Win8 support disk command prompt, I only see my own account (because that's the only admin account?) and no documents in it for example.
Try not using the "All" part of selecting the firmware in BCDBoot. Had the same problem, but selected just UEFI (my machine has it) and it worked! If you have BIOS just use
bcdboot c:\Windows /l nl-NL /s b: /f BIOS
Or for UEFI use
bcdboot c:\Windows /l nl-NL /s b: /f UEFI
Tell me how that goes.
I boot Win8 from USBflash trying repair with most other answers with no result. What helped for me was:
bcdboot d:\Windows /l ru-ru /s c: /f UEFI
I'll mention this happened on ASUS n76vj on 256Gb SSD factory split on 5 partitions