Solved Boot failure error 0xc000000f win7 | cannot auto-repair

[talaitha]

Hi there, i went on break for about 2 weeks, and upon starting up my machine started getting a bsod for unmountable boot volume.
tired to restart in safe mode, but none of the options were working [when attempting safe mode, would load as far as file classpnp.sys], selecting anything would just loop back to the same bsod over & over.

i had a recovery tools/disk on USB [don't have any disc drives on this machine],
so plugged that in & tried running startup repair, but it fails. this is what i get:

after that fail, rebooting my machine no longer yields the bsod mentioned above,
but rather this lovely boot failure error 0xc000000f:

so tried the recovery usb again, this time with command prompt as the recovery tool & ran some stuff there,
below are my results...

- diskpart output:

- bcdedit output:

not sure where to go from here. i've been trying to fix this for 3 days now [spent NYE at home trying to fix this even ].
am hoping won't have to re-install OS cause it's been a while & i don't have the disk anymore [would probably have to install via usb shenanigans], any suggestions greatly appreciated

p.s. sorry for the terrible images, taking them all with my phone.

 

[talaitha]

still haven't been able to fix, anyone have any ideas?

 

[Anshad Edavana]

i went on break for about 2 weeks, and upon starting up my machine started getting a bsod for unmountable boot volume.

That particular BSOD is almost always caused by damaged file system on "C:" partition. The corruption in turn is commonly cause by HDD surface defects ( otherwise called bad sectors ).

The first screenshot you posted also shows Problem signature 07 : No OS installed which means "Startup Repair" can't locate a valid Windows installation. This can also caused by damaged file system. If file system is corrupted and unreadable, the recovery environment will fail to detect whether Win7 is installed or not in the system.

( DISKPART also identifies the 232 GB partition as RAW - which means unidentifiable ).

I would recommend ;

1. Backup any important data to an external medium.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/287439-emergency-kit-save-your-files-dead-os.html

If file system is severely damaged, you may not be able to copy the data to an external medium. In that case, please proceed to step 2.

2. Diagnose and confirm the health status of hard drive.

Once important data are successfully rescued, follow http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/313457-seatools-dos-windows-how-use.html

Although you have a WD disk, "Seatool" supports diagnosing it. Make sure to plug the HDD to a SATA 3gb/s port and set SATA mode to IDE emulation in BIOS before running the "Long" test.

Once the test is finished, report back whether the test detected failures or not (or post a screenshot of the test result ).

 

[gbrlnprt]

Same here. What the hell is wrong with rebooting the pc. I don't have the installation cd or whatever, just don't know what to do.

 

[Kaktussoft]

volume D in you screenshot (the OS disk with win7) has turned RAW. windows doesn't know what it is. Try in "command prompt":

chkdsk/f d:

what happens?

diskpart
select volume D
detail partition
detail volume
exit

Post results

 

[talaitha]

Hi Anshad,

for step 1, wasn't able to back up anything :[
followed the instructions in the emergency kit, but linux mintmate usb stick just kept restarting over & over on boot screen:

after several restarts got this additional message:

working on step 2 at the moment, will post again when done.

 

[talaitha]

Hi Kaktussoft, here is the info requested:

chkdsk/f d:

what happens?

output:

diskpart
select volume D
detail partition
detail volume
exit

Post results

result:

 

[Kaktussoft]

Do the same chkdsk/f d: zommand again please and post output again

 

[Anshad Edavana]

CHKDSK has the bad habit of deleting partially corrupted data and this behavior may cause data loss if there are lost of bad sectors. That is the reason why i don't suggested running CHKDSK directly without knowing how much bad sectors are there ( Seatool usually report the number of defects it founds ). If there are no bad sectors/only a few, usually it is safe to run CHKDSK.

Since Mint refuses to run on your system, i would suggest "Puppy" which is only 160 MB in size : http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-slacko-5.7/slacko-5.7.0-PAE.iso

 

[Kaktussoft]

CHKDSK has the bad habit of deleting partially corrupted data and this behavior may cause data loss if there are lost of bad sectors. That is the reason why i don't suggested running CHKDSK directly without knowing how much bad sectors are there ( Seatool usually report the number of defects it founds ). If there are no bad sectors/only a few, usually it is safe to run CHKDSK.

Since Mint refuses to run on your system, i would suggest "Puppy" which is only 160 MB in size : http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-slacko-5.7/slacko-5.7.0-PAE.iso

What do you mean by saying "partitially corrupted"??? If sectors are faulty,... the file the sector belongs to is corrupted. So useless. At least for system files.

 

[talaitha]

Do the same chkdsk/f d: zommand again please and post output again

done:

@Anshad: haven't gotten to step2 yet, as i have to go to someone else's house & borrow their machine to do so.

 

[ShoTTaS]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html how about this? i read a lot of post here, that suggest this fix

 

[Anshad Edavana]

What do you mean by saying "partitially corrupted"??? If sectors are faulty,... the file the sector belongs to is corrupted. So useless. At least for system files.

Not always. If a big file is using lots of sectors ( ie, 1000 or more) and only one of them is bad, the file may actually healthy. The part of data stored on the bad sector may or may not be vital.

Dealing with failing hard drives is one thing i do regularly as part of my job. I had the habit of running CHKDSK first to fix the corruption and then rescuing all readable data before changing the HDD. Since i do this fairly regularly, i noticed that CHKDSK is converting even healthy files to .CHK chunks and sometimes deleting entire folders which it thinks as corrupted (one time an entire User profile folder which has important data on it ! ). Then i begin to use Live Linux discs to try reading the corrupted volumes. Surprisingly the Linux NTFS drivers are stupid enough ( which is actually good ) to ignore some corruption and allow us to read the file system. I have much success this way than directly running CHKDSK.

If both Windows and Linux can't open the file system and there is important data to recover, i would first create a sector by sector disk image and then later use a DR tool to recover data from the image.

 

[talaitha]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html how about this? i read a lot of post here, that suggest this fix

hi ShoTTas, tried sfc /scannow cmd several times [more than 3],
and all gave the same result:

tried rebooting, & running the command again, same msg persists [pending repair needing reboot].
also tried sfc /verifyonly yet still same message [pending repair].



@Kaktussoft: after rebooting due to above suggestion,
system recovery tools is now presenting an extra screen advising me to re-img my machine:

 

[talaitha]

well puppy didn't work for backup either, very strange...

@Kaktussoft: any ideas from the 2nd chkdsk/f d: results?

 

[Kaktussoft]

Is chkdsk/f giving errors all the time?

Try seatools or western digital lifeguard diagnostic to test the disk for hardware errors. Post results

 

[mjf]

If you have a system image then this is what you should be using.

Getting important data off your HDD should be a priority. Does Puppy linux show your HDD and can you click on it to mount it? If not then you may have a corrupt file system which will require an attempt at Raw file recovery. This software may help but it's tedious
PhotoRec - CGSecurity

Hopefully you have backups of critical data. If all else fails you need to check the integrity of your HDD ideally using the manufacturers disk check utility. Then do a clean install would be my recommendation if you don't have a system image.

 

[talaitha]

@kaktussoft: chkdsk is just showing the same results i've posted

@mjt: at this point i've given up retrieving any data off the hdd, i've tried multiple things [including tools off hiren] & none are working. never seen this happen before. and no system img is available.

at this point i'm just going to re-install OS, data be damned, nothing too important on their anyway that i didn't have backed up on an external hd.

thx for the help & tips.

 

[talaitha]

so i ended up installing win 8, and it fantastically kept a backup of my old win7 install, i was then able to save a lot of the data i wanted onto OneDrive, then re-installed OS again with a fresh install [deleting all other prev partitions]

thanks to everyone's suggestions!

 

[mjf]

so i ended up installing win 8, and it fantastically kept a backup of my old win7 install, i was then able to save a lot of the data i wanted onto OneDrive, then re-installed OS again with a fresh install [deleting all other prev partitions]

thanks to everyone's suggestions!

It would be helpful for others to help if you posted a disk management screenshot.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html