Failed driver update now can't boot Windows 7 on NVME SSD (0x0000007B)

Hi,

I run Windows 7 on a Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD, on a machine based on an Intel i6700K CPU and Asus Maximus Hero VIII motherboard, with no discrete graphic card (integrated GPU).
Yesterday, I attempted to update graphic and storage drivers, in an effort to solve a long running issue of frequent BSOD failures, but it only made the situation way worse, as I got a dreaded BSOD at the next startup, with an error code 0x0000007B (1), which seems to mean that the system can no longer properly access the boot device. First, how can it even start at all (I can see the regular Windows logo) if the very device where the system is located can't be accessed ?
My mistake may have been to run the Samsung NVME driver update while the system was requesting a reboot to finalize the update of the Intel graphic and storage drivers -- the Samsung installer issued an error warning, saying that it could not delete the current drivers or something similar, I should have made a screenshot.
I tried... many things, and everything failed.
- Running the boot repair protocol at the next startup, then loading the "pure" NVME drivers (2) from a DVD (a USB drive could not be loaded in that environment), it did see the Windows install, and pretended to fix something, but at the next startup nothing had changed.
- From the same environment, I tried recovering the system from the only restore point available, seemingly made right before the Intel drivers update, didn't solve the problem either.
- I tried booting from a Lubuntu live USB drive, even that didn't work, I tried various BIOS/UEFI settings, to no avail. What I wanted to do : since I still have my former SATA SSD, on which that Windows install was originally made (and I remember having a similar issue when trying to boot from the NVME SSD until I installed the NVME driver on the SATA SSD before cloning to the NVME SSD), I figured that I could clone the Windows partition from the NVME SSD to the SATA SSD, in the hope that it would boot correctly from there, then fix the driver issues, then clone back to the NVME SSD.
- I also tried booting from the SATA SSD, and copying the older Samsung NVME driver files in the "System32\drivers" directory from the SATA SSD to the NVME SSD, which didn't work either.

So, it's been two days wasted on trying to solve this nightmare, and I'm at a loss here. What more can I do in such a situation, that is proven to work ?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT : Safe Boot is not available anywhere on the NVME SSD (although it would probably not help in that situation), but it did appear when I booted from the SATA SSD.


(1) The complete error code :
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xFFFFF880009A97E8, 0xFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0x000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)
(2) The individual files extracted from the installer, downloaded from there :
Forum - Recommended AHCI/RAID and NVMe Drivers

Hi abolibibelot,

Welcome to SevenForums!

This might be of use Update your Win 7 installation media.

Paul Black
Thanks for this quick reply, but I fail to see how it relates with my problem.

Well, is there some additional information I should provide ? ê_ê

You can try this boot media. It contains dism++ ( shortcut on the desktop) which can be used to install/uninstall drivers/packages by pointing it at the sick OS.

It has lots of other tools for making images/cloning/partitioning, etc.

17514x64v15.iso

You need to extract the 17514x64v15.iso to usb stick - usb7ice can do that simply
View attachment 409975

It will find any installed os and list them at the top. Click on the os you want to work on to highlight it in blue.

Then click Open Session

Then click Drivers in the left pane

View attachment 409976


View attachment 409977

@ SIW2
Thanks for this elaborate reply. I had already found that ISO image (after reading this thread) and transferred it with Rufus to a 2GB µSD card connected through a USB reader (it's all I have available right now and it should act just like a USB Flash drive) : it works, but I can't find DISM++, on the desktop I only see dism10a.wcs (and NT6Repair4.wcs, Hotswap!, EasyBCD). I can't find it either in the listed "Programs". There is a "DISM" directory at the root of X: and a dism.exe file inside but it's apparently a CLI only version. I downloaded both 17514x64v14.iso and 17514x64v15.iso but I'm sure that I chose v15 in Rufus, the window is still opened ; the "volume name" is "GSP1RMCULXFRER_EN_DVD". Then from the live session, in "System", it is called "minint-13o5gao". I'll try again with Usb7ice, but I don't see how the outcome could be different. Or is there something else I missed ?

But, assuming that I end up making this work as intended, what should I do precisely ? Remove the NVME driver and reinstall it ? Isn't that what I did already, by copying the secnvme.sys and secnvmeF.sys files from the older install to the newer one ? Or is there something else to fix, in the registry or elsewhere ?
I just noticed something weird : although I'm positive that I did replace the newer .sys files (date = 09/27/2019) by the older ones (date = 02/13/2018) in the "System32" directory on the NVME drive, I can see now, looking for those files from within the 17514x64v15.iso live session (doesn't it have a regular name by the way ?), that the date is 09/27/2019, meaning that they were reverted at some point during my subsequent startup attempts. How is this possible ? In the "LastGood" directory those files are dated 02/13/2018, as expected, so it can't come from there (I found that directory by making a thorough search for "secnvme" on the whole partition). By the way, what is the purpose of that "LastGood" directory ? Couldn't I simply restore everything that's in there ? (It seems to contain the former Intel drivers as well.) How can this be done reliably ?

So I tried with Usb7ice, then I tried v14 instead of v15 -- same result, I still can't find DISM++ anywhere within the live session, even though it's there on the µSD card, in the "Uprograms" directory. That doesn't make any sense... or does it somehow ? Could it be related to some BIOS/UEFI setting ? How can I get this to work as intended ?

So I tried putting the ISO to a DVD-RW : this time four extra shortcuts appeared on the desktop (I have no idea why they weren't there before when booting from the µSD/USB device), including Dism++, but if I double-click on it nothing happens. If I right-click and left click on "Open file location" I get an error message saying that "Windows cannot find the target". I checked the shortcut's properties, it points to "Y:\Uprograms\Dism++", so I opened that location : the Dism++.exe file is there so I don't understand why the shortcut fails to open it. Then if I launch Dism++ there's another warning : "Temporary directory space less than 5GB, Dism++ may not work properly". What am I supposed to do now ?! At this point I feel like rolling on the floor screaming like a maniac which I might very well become by the end of the day if I keep enduring this ordeal... Õ_Õ

If I run it anyway and go to the "Drivers" subsection, I can't find the Samsung NVME driver, even after checking "Display in-box drivers" (whatever that means). I do find the two relevant files under 'Utilities\Startup", but I don't know what the purpose of this section is. I still can't find anything that remotely points toward the direction of a potential solution. (But I do find weird typos like "temprorary", which somehow tends to lower my confidence level when it comes to a software designed for advanced system tweaking and fixing.)
Any clue, anyone ?

1. If you are using dism++ to download and install the ms update database and all the 160plus updates, it will need a lot of space. Many people use it for that. That is why it suggeste 5gb min

Because you are not doing that, you can ignore the message. Nearly all software will require temp folder - particularly windows itself, which is constantly creating temp files.

2. If the drivers are not showing, it must be because they are not found in the registry, or at least not in the way they should be.

You can use regworkshop to search the registry for what you think could be the driver names.

3. From your first post, it might be the problem is a botched graphic drivers installation.

Did you have samsung nvme drivers installed previously, or were you just using the MS nvme updates?

If you did have the samsung drivers installed as your first post implied, they don't appear to be there now ( or at least they are no longer correctly installed).

From your first post, it is possible your earlier samsung driver were deleted, yet the newer version didn't install. That would tally with not being to find them via dism++.

You could try installing the samsung drivers using dism++ and see if that does it.

There might be additional issues, of course as you were doing it while instaling graphic card drivers.

You could check and see if you have hive backups in windows\system32\config\regbak. Also use shadowcopyview to check for any other shadow copies, you might have several - which will also contain the hives.

Well, thanks again, but the information is still rather sketchy at this point... I launched RegWorkshop (again, the shortcut is unresponsive, had to find it in the DVD's subfolders), but how can I use it to edit the registry from the NVME SSD Windows install ? And how should I know what to modify and where ?

Indeed I can find "secnvme.inf-3.0.0.1802" under Storage controllers for the SATA SSD Windows install, for the NVME SSD install I see only Intel and Asmedia, which indeed seems to imply that the Samsung driver is not correctly registered, so at least it seems to be on the right path.

Also, do you have any clue why those extra blank shortcuts don't appear when booting from a USB device ? And why they appear as blank and are unresponsive when booting from a DVD ? (At least the corresponding tools can be found, which wasn't the case when booting from USB.)

I do have a backup in RegBak, from 2019/10/30, and there's a shadow copy from 2019/11/01, made right when I was doing those updates -- so could it be an explanation to what happened, if somehow the NVME driver update was made on the current set of files while the Intel driver update was made on the shadow copy, or the other way around, and when the system rebooted it ended up in an inconsistent state ? Now what should I do with those backups, and how should I proceed to make sure that I don't screw things up any further ?

There is a special mechanism which assigns Y to the device containing the USBPrograms folder. I don't know why it doesn't work for you on your usb stick. That explains the absence of shortcuts when you used usb.

There is a script under the start menu called Fixusb which will try and find the usb stick and create the shortcuts, if it hasn't been found at startup.

As you have discovered, shortcuts to a non writable media, such as cd/dvd are not ideal. If you are able to run them directly from the dvd, than that will have to do.

Also, how can I load the driver files if I can't connect a USB drive in that environment ? (And the DVD drive is already used by the live system itself...)

Rename the hives in system32\config folder by adding a made up extension - to something like components.bok, default.bok, software.bok, system.bok etc.

( you can ignore the regtrans-ms files and log files - you just need to rename the actual hives)

Then copy the hives ( with no extensions) from Regbak folder into config folder.

Then when you reboot that will be the same registry you had on 2019/10/30

So, with Dism++ I did install that damn driver (copied the files to a secondary partition on the SSD -- I retried booting from a USB device : the Fixusb script is not there either, I find it only if booting from the DVD), then a Samsung subsection appeared in "Drivers"... but it changed nothing, I still get that damn BSOD !
Now what ? Could it be that this newer driver is not suitable ? Then how can I install the older one that way, without the proper .inf file ? (I had originally installed it with a .exe installer, as I did this time before I found that RAR file with the individual .sys / .inf / .cat files.)
Or is there a way to use that shadow copy ? But isn't that precisely what using the system restore is supposed to do ? (Which I already tried, and it failed.)

So... isn't there a more "surgical", more elegant and less hazardous method than recovering the whole registry from a backup, assuming that there is one which is not too old ? And won't it result in yet another series of inconsistencies, considering that the registry from 2019/10/30 contained references to files which have changed in the mean time, or possibly even have been deleted during that botched update ?