Can't boot

My Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit was going great until I installed about 20 Updates yesterday from Microsoft and rebooted. I tried three times and got the BSOD every time. I tried to do System Restore but it failed on three separate ones. I then tried to restore from two different full system image backups but these failed too.

I'm getting a black screen with white letters that says "Windows failed to start," etc. At the bottom it says: "Status: 0xc 000000e" and "Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."

I used Hiren's Boot Disc and booted into the mini-Windows XP, then opened the Disk Management app. A screenshot of what I see is pasted here:


In case it doesn't show up, it's also posted at Gyazo at 40c692ebb3a985da60ff82e1e88adc08.png.

I should explain that I have been using a 100-MB RAMdisk to cache my Firefox browser, and that might be the reason I'm having this trouble, since maybe the RAMdisk is the unallocated space between the two disks shown in the screenshot, and that's what is causing my PC not to boot from the restored backup. I tried to delete that unallocated space, but there's no option to do that.

Can anyone help me reboot my PC back into Windows? Thank you.

Frank D

Do you have the Win7 System Reserved 100mb partition intended to boot Win7 in some cases? Browse into E to see if the boot files are there. If so it should be marked Active to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times. Later remove its drive letter.

If not C is already marked Active so unplug all other HD's to run the three separate repairs with reboots to see if Win7 will start and C becomes marked System Active.

If not then from the Win7 disk or System Repair Disk try System Restore to before the Updates were installed. This is the fix for when Updates foul the boot so System Restore should always be turned on and have as much disk space as you can spare to make more Restore points which last longer: System Protection - Change Disk Space Usage.

If these all fail then work through the other steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start since you can never rule out infection completely and it may not repair until disinfected if so. The steps also include everything that possibly can be done leading up to if necessary rescuiing your files to run HP System Recovery or get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. If Recovery use Minimal Recovery if available.

If your HP still has the bloated factory preinstall be aware that is the worst possible install of Win7 one can have, and which no tech enthusiast would run. So I'd strongly consider this as the opportunity to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Mark the data drive Inactive if it doesn't have an OS booting on it: Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums.

You could also have problems with the swap partition you created, especially if it replaced System Reserved without moving the boot files to C by marking it active to run the 3 repairs.

First, my thanks to Jacee and gregrocker for their suggestions, and my apologies to them for not seeing their suggestions before I plunged ahead and did the "dirty deed" below.
======================================================

After some investigation, theories, and guesswork . . .

1. I restored the last good full system image backup that I had. (Obviously, it wouldn't boot.)

2. I took out my trusty CD copy of EASEUS Partition Master Professional Edition, 8.0.1, rebooted the PC, and ran the program from the CD.

3. I got rid of that unallocated space between the first (system) and third (C: drive) partitions.

4. I rebooted.

-->>> Result: Terminal ecstasy! All is well again! Windows is and runs exactly as it was and did before I installed those Windows updates! <<<-- I am all kinds of happy again.


5. As a precaution against this happening again, I turned off that RAMdisk I had been using, so it won't be messing up my system image backups anymore.

I hope this may help others in the same situation.

And thanks again for those suggestions which I'm sorry to say that I didn't see before plunging ahead.

Frank D

Please post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image