Windows OS Hub / Windows 10 / How to Repair EFI/GPT Bootloader on Windows 10 or 11

June 8, 2023 Windows 10 Windows 11 Windows Server 2019

How to Repair EFI/GPT Bootloader on Windows 10 or 11

In this article, we will learn how to repair the Windows bootloader on a modern computer that uses UEFI instead of a classic BIOS and GPT disk partition table (instead of MBR). The corruption of the Windows bootloader can occur after installing a second OS (in Dual Boot configurations), file system corruption, incorrect actions during Windows recovery, removal of some data on hidden partitions, malicious software (virus, ransomware, etc.), and for some other reasons.

This article contains a step-by-step guide for repairing a damaged or deleted bootloader in Windows 11/10/8.1 and Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012R2 on computers running in native (non-compatible) UEFI mode. You can use this guile both to repair the binary files of the Windows bootloader, and the bootloader configuration \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD file (in cases where Windows doesn’t boot due to the missing or corrupted BCD boot configuration file).

Contents:

Windows Boot Error: Boot Configuration Data is Missing (EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD)
Automatic Windows Bootloader Repair with WinRE
Using BCDBoot to Manually Repair EFI Bootloader in Windows

Windows Boot Error: Boot Configuration Data is Missing (EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD)

A UEFI computer with Windows installed in native mode will not be able to boot if the Windows EFI bootloader is corrupted. When trying to boot from a disk with a damaged or missing EFI bootloader, the following BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) error appear:

The boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
File :\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f

or:

Error code: 0xc000014c

$boot configuration errors 0xc000000f or missing file \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD$

This error indicates that the Windows bootloader configuration (Boot Configuration Data, BCD) has been corrupted or even completely removed. If you try to repair the bootloader on a UEFI computer using bcdedit tool, you will receive an error:

The boot configuration data store could not be found.
The requested system device cannot be found.

If Windows 10/11 is installed in native UEFI mode on a GPT disk, then the Windows EFI bootloader (Windows Boot Manager) stores the boot manager and BCD configuration on a separate hidden EFI volume (100 MB in size with the FAT32 file system). The bcdedit tool doesn’t see this EFI partition, and cannot manage the bootloader configuration on it.

If you only see a black screen with the message “An operating system wasn’t found” when you boot your computer, it’s likely that the Windows bootloader has been completely removed. Follow the instructions on the link.

Automatic Windows Bootloader Repair with WinRE

The procedure for the automatic repair of the EFI bootloader used in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is usually useless in such cases. But it’s still worth a try:

Boot your device from the recovery disc or Windows 10/11 installation media;
Click the Restore System on the installation screen;
Then select Troubleshoot -> Startup Repair and select the OS whose bootloader you want to try to repair;
But most likely the result will be negative: Automatic Repair couldn’t repair your PC.

Using BCDBoot to Manually Repair EFI Bootloader in Windows

Let’s move on to the procedure for manually repairing the EFI Windows bootloader on a UEFI computer.

To repair the bootloader configuration (BCD), you have to boot from the original Windows installation media (also, you can use a recovery disk or a special UEFI bootable USB flash drive). After booting into the recovery environment, you need to open a command-line console: select System Restore – > Troubleshoot-> Command Prompt).

You can run the Command Prompt even if you only have a Windows installation media at hand. To do this, it is enough to press the key combination Shift + F10 (or Shift + Fn + F10 on some laptop models) on the first Windows setup screen (when choosing a language and keyboard layout).

In the command prompt that opens, run the disk management tool:

diskpart

Display the list of drives on the computer:

list disk

At this stage, it is very important to determine the type of partition table on the disk on which your Windows is installed: MBR or GPT. The point is that the EFI bootloader is used only on disks with a GPT partition table.

If the asterisk (*) is in the Gpt column, then the GPT partition table is used on disk. If not, the MBR is used.

If your disk uses a GPT partition table, follow the steps below in the instructions to repair the Windows EFI bootloader.

If you have an MBR partition table on your disk, this guide won’t work for your computer. Most likely you have a computer with BIOS or Legacy/Compatibility Support Mode (CSM) option enabled in the UEFI settings.

On MBR disks, the Windows bootloader is stored on a separate System Reserved partition, and not on the EFI partition (in any case, don’t convert the MBR partition table to GPT until you fix the Windows bootloader !!). Use another guide to restore the BCD bootloader on a BIOS computer with MBR (Master Boot Record) disk.

Select the drive where your Windows is installed (if there is only one hard drive in the system, its index should be 0):

sel disk 0

Display the list of partitions and volumes on this disk: list partition list volume

In this example, you can see that the EFI boot partition has the partition 2 index (aka Volume 5 with the Hidden label). The easiest way to identify an EFI partition is by the FAT32 file system and 100 MB in size (this is the standard minimum size of EFI partition for Windows computers; in rare cases, the partition size may differ). The most commonly used label for it is System EFI or ESP/EFI System Partition).

In our example, the main partition on which Windows is installed has a volume 2 index, is formatted in the NTFS file system, and is assigned the drive letter C:.

dir C:\

Make sure that this drive contains the Windows, Program Files, Users, and other directories.

If these directories are missing, then your Windows drive has a different drive letter. Check the contents of drives with different drive letters assigned.

Write down the drive letter assigned to the Windows partition. We will use it as one of the arguments of the bcdboot command a little later.

The partition table must also contain an MSR (Microsoft System Reserved) partition of 16 MB in Windows 10/11 (or 128 MB in Windows 8.1).

If you don’t have a separate EFI or MSR partition, you can recreate them manually. Check the article Restoring deleted EFI and MSR system partitions.

Assign the drive letter K: to the hidden EFI volume:

select volume 5
assign letter K:

A message that the drive letter has been successfully assigned to the EFI partition should appear:

DiskPart is successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

Close the diskpart:
exit
Go to the bootloader directory on the hidden volume:
cd /d K:\efi\microsoft\boot\

In this case, K: is the drive letter assigned to the EFI partition just above. If the \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ directory is missing (error The system cannot find the path specified), try the following commands:

cd /d K:\Boot\
or
cd /d K:\ESD\Windows\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

At this point, many guides recommend running the following commands, which should overwrite the partition boot record, find the installed Windows, and add them to the BCD:


 bootrec /fixboot
 bootrec /scanos
 bootrec /rebuildbcd

or even:
bootrec /FixMbr (preparing MBR record for a GPT disk looks strang)

You can use all these commands only for MBR-based disks. If your computer boots in UEFI mode, then it definitely uses the GPT partition table (as in our case). Therefore, when you run bootrec commands, you will see an error: access is denied

You need to use the BCDBoot.exe tool to restore bootloader files and fix the boot records on the EFI partition by copying them from the system directory on the Windows partition. The BCD bootloader configuration is recreated using the %WINDIR%\System32\Config\BCD-Template file.

Use the attrib command to remove the hidden, read-only, and system attributes from the BCD file:

attrib BCD -s -h -r

Delete the current BCD configuration file by renaming it (this will keep the old boot configuration as a backup): ren BCD BCD.bak
Using the bcdboot tool, you need to copy the critical files of the UEFI boot environment from the system directory to the EFI boot partition and recreate the BCD bootloader config file:
bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL

C:\Windows – the path to the root Windows system directory on the disk (this is your disk on which your Windows is installed, we determined it earlier using the diskpart command);
f ALL –means that you need to copy the Windows Boot Environment files, including those for UEFI and BIOS computers (theoretically able to boot both on UEFI and BIOS computers). To copy only the EFI bootloader, use the /f UEFI command;
/l en-us —specifies the system locale that is used when initializing the BCD store. By default, en-us – English (USA) is used;
/s K: — copy the bootloader EFI files to the specified partition;
/c – this is a new BCDBoot option in Windows 10 that allows you to overwrite existing boot records (including debugsettings). Use this option to ignore old boot settings and create a clean BCD configuration;
/v – used to enable BCDBoot verbose output.

Hint. If you use a localized version of Windows 10/11, the command will be different. For example, in the Windows version for the UK, use the following command:
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-GB /s K: /f ALL
Windows 10 Dutch:
bcdboot c:\Windows /l nl-NL /s K: /f ALL
Windows 10 Deutch (German):
bcdboot c:\Windows /l de-DE /s K: /f ALL

A complete list of language/region tags for Windows is available here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/available-language-packs-for-windows?view=windows-11

Now, if you run the bcdedit command, you will see the following :

An entry should appear in the Windows Boot Manager section containing the full path to the UEFI boot file (\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI).In this example, it is located on volume 5 (partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume5).

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume5
path                    \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
bootshutdowndisabled    Yes
default                 {CURRENT}
resumeobject            {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}
displayorder            {default}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 10
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence       {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}
recoveryenabled         Yes
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}

The Windows Boot Manager section must contain the path to the EFI partition (=\Device\HarddiskVolume5 ) and the path to the boot manager file (bootmgfw.efi). The Windows Boot Loader section contains the Windows partition info and the path to the Windows EFI bootloader ( \Windows\system32\winload.efi). When you turn it on, your computer will pass control to the EFI bootloader, which will start the Windows bootloader.

Possible errors:

BFSVC Error: Could not open the BCD template store. status – [c000000f] – check if the entered command is correct and whether you have a localized Windows version installed. In this case, you need to specify the correct local language code. The bcdboot tool copies the BCD template files from the \Windows\System32\Config directory. If the BCD template files in this folder are damaged or deleted, try to check the integrity of the system files offline using the sfc.exe tool (you need a Windows installation disc as a source, drive D: in this case): sfc /scanow /OFFBOOTDIR=C:\ /OFFWINDIR=D:\WINDOWS
BFSVC Error: Error copying boot files from Last Error = 0x570 – try to check drive using the command CHKDSK K: /F
BFSVC Error: Failed to set element application device. Status = [c000000bb] – check the EFI and Windows 10 partitions using chkdsk.exe. Verify that the hidden and system attribute of the BCD file is cleared:
attrib -s -h \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD del \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Failure when initializing library system volume – make sure you are using the correct FAT32 partition with EFI (you may have several similar partitions);
Failure when attempting to copy boot files – check the Windows drive letter in your bcdboot command. The screenshot below shows that the error appeared when trying to copy the boot files from the C: drive. In this case, most likely the Windows drive is assigned a different letter, such as D:. You can find the Windows drive and the assigned drive letter using the diskpart and dir commands (described above).

Now you need to restart your computer and disconnect the bootable media. If you did everything correctly, the Windows Boot Manager should appear in the list of bootable devices, where you can choose a desired operating system to boot. Your EFI bootloader and BCD configuration have been restored successfully!

In some cases, after repairing the BCD bootloader, when Windows boots, a BAD SYSTEM CONFIG INFO error appears. To fix the error:

Make sure you haven’t made any recent changes to UEFI settings. Undo all changes.

Boot your computer from the installation/bootable flash drive and change the bootloader configuration with the commands:

bcdedit /deletevalue {default} numproc
bcdedit /deletevalue {default} truncatememory

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224 comments

Dual operating system, cannot boot Windows 8, tried Boot-Repair-Disk and Windows repair, GRUB, EFI - ServerAB September 21, 2014 - 9:33 am

[…] I followed the instructions in here: https://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/ I see that my C: is not reachable, and the info of my volume is Hidden So I have to do […]

Tomasz April 11, 2023 - 12:47 am

I was looking for fix for so long but finally this solved my problem. I thought thats end for 1TB of data on my disk because of damaged boot BCD files but this helped me a lot! Thank you for this guide

Mick November 9, 2014 - 5:16 pm

Thanks. It helped me well!

chris September 14, 2022 - 10:52 pm

thank you a lot, you saved me

Kai September 19, 2022 - 11:03 am

I followed this. Didn’t encounter any error but Windows boot manager ia still not seen in BIOS UEFI BOOT OPTIONS

Sidney December 13, 2022 - 9:59 pm

what about if you press f9 for your bios boot options, not only do I see the bootmanager as an option, I see the second fat32 partition I made with winodow setup ISO extracted on it as a boot option label as my Hard drive model number . IE ST1503xxxxxxxx , something like that, and when I choose that, it goes right into setup to install or repair my computer..

Eras November 28, 2014 - 1:32 am

Hello, I get everything ok, respecting all spaces and / \ positions, and get stuck here: ( I assigned letter “i” instead of “k”)
i:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>ren BCD BCD.bak
The system can not find the file specified

Max November 28, 2014 - 6:01 am

ren BCD BCD.bak need to back up current BCD config.
In your case probably BCD has already been deleted. Follow the next step – where it is recreated.

Eras November 28, 2014 - 12:22 pm

Thank you for the quick reply! On the next step, skipping the previous, I get this message:
“Failure when attempting to copy boot files”

I’m doing this using the built in recovery tools inside a HP All in one 20-b323w, and using the recovery inside a usb uefi drive with Windows 8 64 bit in it.

Here’s a picture: http://i.imgur.com/2rmM2CT.jpg

Thank you for your help!!!

Kino July 23, 2016 - 7:44 pm

I got that error too at first. Try the next FAT32 drive. Assign it a different letter and trust me it will work.

Ruoaa December 1, 2014 - 4:30 am

I`m trying to replace a linux i guess this won`t work for me !

Max December 2, 2014 - 10:14 am

You have an error in the syntax of windir path
Try specify path c:\windows instead c:windows

javier July 10, 2020 - 3:37 am

Thank you so much, your tip saves my data and work.

Chris December 7, 2014 - 8:03 pm

I followed the steps but in the last step i get this message:
BFSVC Error: Could not open the BCD template store. Status = [c000000f]
Any ideas?

Zahiruzzaman Chowdhury January 5, 2021 - 3:56 am

You maybe don’t have a BCD file to edit, or just forgot to set attributes – double-check that you set the attributes and then move on with the next steps

Chris December 7, 2014 - 8:49 pm

Please disregard my previus comment. The issue was solved by replacing / with \ on the last command!!!
At first i wrote bcdboot c:/windows /l en-us /s /k: /f ALL instead of bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us /s /k: /f ALL
Even a wrong backslash counts!!!

Matt October 4, 2017 - 2:15 pm

Thank you Chris. Same problem here. /\

Michel January 14, 2015 - 9:43 pm

For a moment I thought I would never be able to bring my laptop back to life again, but this page helped me to fix the problem. Just needed to change the language in the syntax to nl-NL and find the right volume and file (was 300MB in my case, but also a FAT32, also slighly different name of the BCD-file). Thanks a lot!

Felipe January 25, 2015 - 3:58 pm

Hey guy.. Thanks a lot.. It’ve worked for me.

Daniel February 20, 2015 - 5:09 am

Hello, I followed your guide and seems like it would work great but I have a slight issue. I have tried to dual boot my computer which worked until Windows 8 had to update and I updated it while I was sleeping and now it will not boot up. When I list the volumes I get the following
“DVD rom – UDF
System Reset – NTFS
Windows 8 – NTFS
Windows 7 – NTFS
Random Item (other harddrive for storage ) – NTFS”
I get nothing else I do not have the bootstrap or FAT32 any suggestions? I no longer need the windows 7 So if I could get rid of it that would be great.

Max February 20, 2015 - 1:10 pm

Repair bootloader this way and then delete Windows 7 boot entry with msconfig utility (fron win 8)

Daniel February 21, 2015 - 12:20 am

How would I rebair the boot without the FAT32?

Daniel February 28, 2015 - 12:46 am

How would i repair the boot without having the FAT32 reserve file on any of my harddrives?

Daniel February 28, 2015 - 7:18 am

I skipped the steps with the FAT 32 and got all the way until renaming BCD I fixed it and was successful but when I went to rename it access got denied. When I attempted to copy the boot files they also failed. Any other ideas?

Max March 2, 2015 - 11:05 am

First, check that your PC is support UEFI (this article is not applicable for BIOS systems).

Next, check you hard disk partition table style (list disk command in diskpart). It can be GPT (not MBR).

How to manually create partition for UEFI:https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825686.aspx

Viki March 9, 2015 - 3:37 am

Hi Max,
All went well until I got to: ren BCD BCD.bak
where I got the response: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
Any Suggestions?
Viki

Max March 11, 2015 - 7:57 am

You BCD can be broken. Skip this step and move to the next, where you recreate BCD config.

Leander March 12, 2015 - 6:32 pm

hi, i have nearly the same problem, buti dont have that fat32 with 100 mb partition, it looks like this:
Vol 0      F    Windows 8   UDF     DVD-ROM       3623MB     healthy     (no info)
Vol 1      C   Windows8_OS    NTFS    Partition              417GB      healthy     (no info)
Vol 2     D Lenovo                   NTFS    Partition              25 GB       healthy     (no info)
Vol 3            WINRE_DRV NTFS Partition    1000MB healthy    hidden
Vol 4           SYSTEM_DRV    FAT32 Partition             260 MB healthy      hidden
Vol 5                                           NTFS    Partition              450MB healthy       hidden
Vol 6             PBR_DRV    NTFS    Partition 20 GB healthy hidden
Vol 7     E      USB DISK      FAT32        Removable       7279MB   healthy    (no info)
Vol 8             LRS_ESP         FAT32       Partition          1000MB   healthy    hidden
My english is not the best, in from germany, sorry, but i hope you can help me. i tried with vol 4 instead of your vol 1 and replaced the language to instead of en-us to de-de. i did anything u wrote and it seemed to do what it should. but when restarted my laptop, the same message with that ” 🙁 ” – Smiley came, i cant start windows and then it restarts again, same blue screen with the unhappy smiley, collecting information again , restarting… and this repeats infinitly. hope you can help me, thanks

Michael March 21, 2015 - 4:28 pm

Thank you very much. Works perfect. Made my day

Vikram March 24, 2015 - 9:19 am

Thanks for the detailed guide. I am getting the same error only difference being I am using Win 7. In my case the windows Installation media is not seeing my windows partition. (On clicking repair conputer the box is blank wheras ideally it should be showing the current installation path of Windows) What should I do ? In Linux I am able to access the win partition. Could this be due to wrong setting of boot flag? I had actually installed Linux first and then Win 7 . Both of them are in 2 different hard disks. When I installed Win 7 , I think the EFI folder used by linux was shared by windows and a separate partition was not created. So in this case , what should I do? – Reset the bootflag to Linux partition where EFI part resides and then make the changes you suggested here?

TrishG82 April 15, 2015 - 5:08 pm

Hi I’m having problems as above – everything works up to bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL
“Then I get Failure when attempting to copy boot files.”
If I try it without the switches and only bcdboot c:\windows – then I get……
BFSVC Error: BcdOpenSystemStore failed with unexpected error code, Status = [c000015c]

Any other suggestions please?

Dan April 29, 2015 - 7:08 am

Check the path to the drive K:\ and folder C:\Windows. They must exist

Roman April 18, 2015 - 4:47 pm

So what do I do if I’m getting this error and can’t boot from the original (win8.1 x64 OEI)installation cd? I’ve already set the dvd drive as 1st boot priority and restarted. Got the usual “verifying DMI pool data” message then:
Boot From CD/DVD:
Boot From CD/DVD:
then it goes right back to the same error screen. It does this continuously and I’m all out of ideas.

Cristian April 25, 2015 - 5:50 am

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you
Works perfect

Do Xuan Thao May 5, 2015 - 9:48 am

Thanks you very much!

ludba June 14, 2015 - 3:13 pm

i got success all the way, the final step bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us /s /k: /f ALL, gives me error message “failure when initializing library system volume” what those that mean? what can i do?

travisjayday June 15, 2015 - 3:33 am

OMG!! Thank you sooo much. I thought I had to do a full restore! Everytime I booted Win 8, it didn’t show a login screen (no password text field, only a blue screen with shutdown options…). You totally saved my ass. By the way, this happened after a Linux install with dual boot (Kali Linux)

Allan Valdivia July 15, 2015 - 7:58 am

Thank you very much for your help! I managed to recover my laptop stopped to four months. A big hug from Brazil.

Arturo Bandini July 15, 2015 - 9:21 pm

Hi, in the final step “c:\windows /l en-us /s /k: /f ALL” do I have to change “en-us” to my language? and, I have to receive a succes message after that?

Max July 20, 2015 - 7:05 am

Likely EN-US should be used for any system language

jan July 30, 2015 - 6:57 am

I am gettint an erorr when running the last command:
Could not open the BCD template store. Status = [c000000f]

Any advice?

XeON January 14, 2019 - 11:44 pm

I have the same problem.

Ruud from the Nethetrlands August 11, 2015 - 7:22 pm

This is great!!!! I’ve spend hours trying to migrate a Win8 installation to another SSD, but I was stuck at this stupid error. Now I´m back at the login prompt.

AlexSG August 16, 2015 - 9:43 pm

Thank you! After an hour of reading other solutions that did not help, this excellent post was able to assist me in repairing the Windows 10 bootloader.

Cameron September 1, 2015 - 5:51 am

I did the steps until this line, cd /d k:\efi\microsoft\boot\, it says “Access is denied”. How do I overrride this?

Cameron September 1, 2015 - 5:51 am

My Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro runs in Windows 10 Student OS to be specific.

chile September 13, 2015 - 1:57 am

Muchas gracias, maestro, me salvaste la vida.
Thankyou very much!!

Cal October 6, 2015 - 3:08 pm

Tx dude. This worked perfectly

Erik October 21, 2015 - 10:38 am

Thanks! Worked fine for me (windows 8.1).
Stupid btw, that the windows tooling does not work on the hidden partition…..

raju October 23, 2015 - 8:47 am

Thanks working fine useful information

Wolfgang December 1, 2015 - 8:12 pm

Thanks a lot !!! Very useful information. Worked perfect for my OS (Win8.1, German language).

Nick S. December 23, 2015 - 1:35 am

Thanks a lot.
Worked for me too on Windows 10. I read many forums and you were the only one to provide the correct instructions for creating the BCD store again:
bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL
In my case I actually had to run the free Boot-Repair tool afterwards but I got the job done.

Joseph A. December 28, 2015 - 4:28 pm

is it same with error code:
0xc000014cv?

Stephen Osterday February 10, 2016 - 9:21 pm

Mine went fine until I got to the bcdboot command. When I ran that it returned the syntax as if I had issued a /?. Dell says my OP is corrupted and wants me to Reset to factory state. I’m trying to avoid that at all costs!!!! I’ve upgraded it from Win 8.1 to Win 10, installed a whole bunch of APPs, and run various tweaks on it over a year-and-a-half.

Sidney December 13, 2022 - 10:19 pm

if your os is corrupted, you could have use windows 10 setup ISO on a usb and repaired it by using DISM command from the command prompt and targeted C: by using the install.wim as your source to fix it .

DISM /image:c:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:wim:E:\Sources\install.wim:6

where e: is usb and 6 is for windows pro . You would have to query the install.wim to find your matching OS index . from inside the sources folder in DOS , use dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:install.wim

CJ February 11, 2016 - 6:29 am

I don’t normally comment on sites, but I just had to come back here and say THANK YOU! I converted a Physical Windows Server 2012 R2 with Disk2VHD to hyper-V and it wouldn’t boot. Using this exact proceedure helped me fire up the Hyper-v instance as a direct imported Gen 2 VHD.

AE February 14, 2016 - 5:42 am

I had accidentally removed the windows EFI partition during a fedora install, so when trying to “cd /d k:\efi\microsoft\boot\” the directory wan’t there (there was only an efi\fedora directory). I simply created the correct directory structure using mkdir, followed the rest of the instructions, and was able to boot from windows upon system restart.
Thanks for the help!

ravi teja February 16, 2016 - 1:42 pm

hi, i have nearly the same problem, buti dont have that fat32 with 100 mb partition, it looks like this:Vol 0 F Windows 8 UDF DVD-ROM 3623MB healthy (no info)Vol 1 C Windows8_OS NTFS Partition 417GB healthy (no info)Vol 2 D Lenovo NTFS Partition 25 GB healthy (no info)Vol 3 WINRE_DRV NTFS Partition 1000MB healthy hidden Vol 4 SYSTEM_DRV FAT32 Partition 260 MB healthy hiddenVol 5 NTFS Partition 450MB healthy hiddenVol 6 PBR_DRV NTFS Partition 20 GB healthy hidden Vol 7 E USB DISK FAT32 Removable 7279MB healthy (no info)Vol 8 LRS_ESP FAT32 Partition 1000MB healthy hiddenMy english is not the best, in from germany, sorry, but i hope you can help me. i tried with vol 4 instead of your vol 1 and replaced the language to instead of en-us to de-de. i did anything u wrote and it seemed to do what it should. but when restarted my laptop, the same message with that “ ” – Smiley came, i cant start windows and then it restarts again, same blue screen with the unhappy smiley, collecting information again , restarting… and this repeats infinitly. hope you can help me, thanks

ravi teja February 16, 2016 - 1:44 pm

help me with this type of disk volumes
kindly explain me in detail about the solution to hidden files.

AL March 4, 2016 - 4:30 am

Hi Max, doe.s this solution works with windows 10 as well? I am having a similar problem.
Thanks, AL

pald December 11, 2020 - 1:11 pm

It works for win10, yes!

Steven April 4, 2016 - 10:23 pm

I have read many similar articles on how to fix Windows boot problem in order to get mine working again. This is the ONLY article that actually works. You have helped me a lot. Thank you so very much!!!

Sush May 16, 2016 - 11:04 pm

I Just have to say i Googled the inital error and tried virtually ALL the other fixes [I’m sure you’re all aware of the ones i’m talking about], and it wasn’t until i got here that my issue was resolved. Thank YOU! for posting this – i’m saving this article for future use!

Kiran May 20, 2016 - 8:20 am

A big thanks to you .. :):)

Liam May 22, 2016 - 4:10 pm

This as well as everyother “fix” for the Windows Bootloader does not work. First I can’t even see the “hidden partition”, then if trying to do the other steps I get “Failure when attempting to copy boot files” when doing bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s g: /f ALL

Ignacio May 28, 2016 - 4:59 am

Thanks mate!! it did work!

Incognite June 11, 2016 - 9:27 am

Thanks! Nothing worked and your solution did work, even for Windows 10!

Jack June 15, 2016 - 9:55 pm

Thanks for the helpful article.
I just have a problem, DISKPART shows my FAT32 partiotions (including the EFI partiotion) as raw in the Fs column. Whereas in a live Ubuntu CD and GParted app, those are shown as FAT32 partiotions.
I’ve successfully assigned the letter (k:) to the EFI volume but couldn’t go the bootloader directory of the hidden EFI volume. The error I encountered is:

This volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.

How to deal with that?
Thanks

admin June 16, 2016 - 5:40 am

It seems that your FAT32 partitions are damaged. Try to re-create the EFI and MSR partitions using guide for Windows 7: https://woshub.com/how-to-repair-deleted-efi-partition-in-windows-7/

Jack June 16, 2016 - 5:43 am

Thanks, I’ll try that

Jack June 16, 2016 - 6:59 am

Thanksss. the tutrorila solved my problem:
https://woshub.com/how-to-repair-deleted-efi-partition-in-windows-7/
Althogh I whish I could understand what’s going on the procedure exactly 😀

Ahmed Hani March 19, 2022 - 5:05 am

Hello Jack,
Could you please let us know how did you manage the raw partition as I have a similar problem?
Thanks

irfx June 23, 2016 - 8:53 pm

I cant see BOOTSTRAP with FAT 32. i see just 4 drives listed which are in MY computer.. plz reply what i do now.

irfx June 23, 2016 - 9:21 pm

Actually i deleted this partition(of 100 MB fat 32) mistakenly.. now how to do ?

Kino July 23, 2016 - 7:42 pm

This works! Thank you i appreciate it. For all who get the failure when initializing library system volume eroor. Just try the next FAT32 volume. I got that error at first. I tried the next FAT32 drive and it worked. Trust me. I was frustrated too, until i found the blog. Thank again.

Jane F December 18, 2020 - 10:42 am

This worked for me. Thank you so many times!

zaina July 29, 2016 - 2:22 am

hi for me I have the same problem :
the boot configuration data for your pc is missing or contain errors
file: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code:0xc000000f

But with windows 10 and I tried both solution create a backup and create new one it doesn’t work
plz help help!!!!

Anthony sessions September 22, 2016 - 2:40 am

Same problem. Please someone save me exams are coming up and I’m broke.
“the boot configuration data for your pc is missing or contain errors
file: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCDError code:0xc000000f”

weik October 7, 2016 - 5:48 am

Great, you save my day! Thanks

Luke October 11, 2016 - 10:52 am

Thanks a lot!! Weeks of work saved from reinstall!!!
Dio canaglia!

T October 20, 2016 - 12:39 pm

Used this solution after removing Ubuntu. The only solution that worked. Papa bless.

Loodusemees November 1, 2016 - 1:51 pm

Thanks a lot! You really made my day! Advice worked well with my Windows 10.

انس الهلالي November 6, 2016 - 1:27 pm

I cant see BOOTSTRAP with FAT 32. i see just 4 drives listed which are in MY computer.. plz reply what i do now.

Zahiruzzaman Chowdhury January 5, 2021 - 4:02 am

You have an MBR then – this guide is not for you then

sura December 14, 2016 - 4:10 pm

Thanks a lot!
All my good-wishes to you.
For those who get error messaage in last step BFSVC Error : Can not open the BCD template store. status – [c000000f]
Please try with ” bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /s v: /f ALL ” command. Please note that you have to try with both forward and backward slash before Windows and your own local language code instead of en-US.

For me the following last command worked
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /s v: /f ALL

Thank You again. Thanks a lot!!

pailhead August 2, 2017 - 2:18 am

still cant get past c000000f

Robert December 18, 2016 - 7:44 pm

Thanks for your help. I was getting no where with trying to fix the boot issues with this server. The boot info was corrupted or just not readable. No matter what i did nothing worked until i tried your steps. yours worked on the first try.

Stephan February 12, 2017 - 12:46 pm

Thanks a lot for the excellent description – it worked fine on my Windows 10.

Alfa February 25, 2017 - 5:47 pm

Excelente solución. También funciona para Windows 10. Muchas gracias.

Caio Foreman March 14, 2017 - 6:01 pm

did everything, now I boot into another error. fie/efi/microsoft/boot/bcd error 0xc000000f and I can only boot into bios. I tried to boot from windows boot manager but it doesnt work

Gunman September 14, 2017 - 1:56 am

Just follow the steps and BOOM everything work well in my Windows 8.1…Thanks a lot.

jON December 8, 2017 - 10:20 am

Great Article

Helped me

Thanks

Gene Edwards March 2, 2018 - 1:33 am

Great article!!!

I was doing a Recovery when my laptop shut down, I forgot to plug the charger back in.

Now I am getting:
The BCD for my pc is missing or contains errors.

File: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f

Windows 8.1 was pre installed on my HP Envey, so I don’t have a Installation disk, plus I never got around to making a Recovery Image.

I’ve successfully assigned the letter (k:) to the system partition, I have tried entering
cd /d K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\
cd /d K:\Boot\
cd /d K:\ESD\Windows\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

Every time I get “The system cannot find the path specified”

How can I fix this?

Thanks

Max March 2, 2018 - 12:50 pm

Show me the contents of your system partition using the command:
dir k:\

Frankd3 March 8, 2018 - 2:15 pm

ASUS Q400 Laptop
Windows Version 8.1
What happened.. 2 days ago I was switching my antivirus protection, and was asked for reboot in order to complete process, and that’s when the BSOD came in, for the past 2 days I have scoured the interwebs for help on this. I have made a iso DVD boot disk and a USB boot disk as well.
When I boot my computer normally it says—- Recovery Your PC needs to be repaired File:\WINDOWS\system32\\drivers\ACPI.sys Error Code 0xc000000f
When I boot from the usb iso file and attempt to Refresh your PC it stated that —The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock and try again
I have ran chkdsk from the command prompt and there seems to be no errors.
Please any help world be appreciated, trying to get my computer back up and going without having to wipe all my personal data..
**no restore point were ever created on this computer.
Thanks
Update** Diskpart List vol Volume 0 D ESD-ISO UDF DVD-Rom 3368 MB Healthy Volume 1 C OS NTFS Partition 677 GB Healthy Volume 2 SYSTEM Fat32 Partition 300 MB Healthy Hidden Volume 3 Recovery NTFS Partition 600 MB Healthy Hidden Volume 4 Restore NTFS Partition 20 GB Healthy Hidden

Update*** bootrec /rebuildbcd Successfully Scanned windows Installations. [1] C:\Windows Add installation to Boot List? Yes/No/ALL The requested system device cannot be found. x:\Sources>

Update *** NEW ERROR** Set the correct Partition... Tried and failed apperently did the following diskpart sel disk 0 list vol sel vol 2 assign letter f: cd /d f:\EFI|Microsoft\Boot bootrec /fixboot ren BCD BCD.Backup bcdboot c:\windows /1 en-us /s f: /f ALL Restarted Computed wo boot disk and now Error shows file\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD error code 0xc000000f

****Update Attempting to repair boot problem Deleted BCD.old,BCD.temp,BCD.tmp off of c:\windows\boot (previous attempts) did x:sources>bootrec.exe /fixmbr operation completed sucsessful

x:sources>d:\boot\bootsect.exe nt60/all /force ***(d is my cd/dvd drive with my boot iso) Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode c: bcdedit /createstore c:\boot\bcd.tmp the operation completed successfully

x:sources>bcdedit.exe /store c:\boot\bcd.tmp /create {bootmgr} /d "windows Boot Manager" The Entry {bootmgr} was successfully created.

x:sources>bcdedit.exe /import c:\boot\bcd.tmp The store import operation has failed.
The Requested system device cannot be found. *********This is where I am… any help thanks

Frankd3 March 8, 2018 - 2:38 pm

Im on day 4 right now I just bought a 2tb HD to xcopy all my data from my c: drive incase I screw my computer up further. Im a complete novice to CMD.exe and understand maybe a fifth of what im doing.. I have no idea if my system is uefi or what.. I know there is a boot option on my bios screen that shows my dvd drive as uefi and when I boot from it, it takes me right back to my bios screen and I have to choose to boot from my other option witch is my dvd drive again without the uefi part on the listing. and that one allows the recovery disk to open and im in the windows repair my computer part.. At this point I have posted this on 5 different forums and zero replys to the posting ugh… I have watched countless youtube videos on this and im just not understanding what is missing … kinda in the dark at the moment. I need to solve this already I don’t not want to give up and do a fresh install I have already invested 4 days and its a matter of pride lol… this will not beat me…

Pepe Gotera March 24, 2018 - 9:00 pm

Thank you very much, this save my life …

Roger Vince March 30, 2018 - 1:21 pm

Thank you very much.

I spent three entire days trying to restore BCD on a windows 10 UEFI system after I accidentally formatted the boot partition. Then I found this site – problem fixed. I also had the “Failure when attempting to copy boot files”. This was because I had the wrong drive letter for the Windows dive. If you have several hard disks ensure that the Windows drive is set to c:
When in Diskpart
Diskpart: list vol
identify the windows partition (not the FAT32 Sytem Partition) and select –
Diskpart: sel vol x (x is the Windows partition)

Now bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /s K: /f ALL should work – it did for me.

Now assign c: to the Windows partition
Diskpart: assign letter=c

Roger Vince April 25, 2018 - 9:16 am

Correction to my comment on March 30th. The bcdboot command should, of course, be last after the assign letter=c line. Sorry for any confusion.

Chris June 6, 2018 - 9:56 pm

This SAVED my life! Windows 2012 Standard Server with Hyper-V running did not want to boot after a bad Windows Update.

Thank you soooooo much!!!!

Mike June 21, 2018 - 6:52 am

MBR got corrupted and the boot partition had to be reassigned and MBR recreated.

This guide showed me how and I got the system back up and working (Windows 10).

Thank you!

Robert Befort June 22, 2018 - 11:31 pm

I have a windows 10 which will not bootup probably due to misconfigured bootloader. When I open diskpart this is the information I get:

List Disk
Status Size Free DYN GPT
Disk 0 online 465 gb 2048 kb *

List Volume
Vol. ### LTR LABEL FS TYPE SIZE STATUS INFO

Volume 0 E J_CCSA_X64F UDF DVDRom 3830 mb healthy
Volume 1 C Windows 10 NTFS Partition 388 gb healthy
Volume 2 D NTFS Partition 75 gb healthy
Volume 3 WINRE_DRV NTFS Partition 999 mb healthy Hidden
Volume 4 SYSTEM_DRV FAT32 Partition 260 mb healthy Hidden
Volume 5 NTFS Partition 488 mb healthy Hidden

I am not trying to install an updated version of windows 10. I just want to be able to boot into what I already have which is version 1511. I know it is outdated but I don’t want to make a change at this time. In the above configuration, would I have to change the letters or volume numbers so that it boots directly into system_drv? Do I even need the vol. labeled J_CCSA? Please advise. Thank you.

admin June 26, 2018 - 6:29 am

Volume 0 E J_CCSA_X64F – this is your DVD drive
You can try to repair your bootloader and BCD configuration and using this manual: https://woshub.com/how-to-rebuild-bcd-file-in-windows-10/

Trying to Convert a Windows 10 OEM Physical Installation to KVM | Ray Woodcock's Latest August 8, 2018 - 5:23 am

[…] to do in that case. Both were small: Volume 3 was 1024 MB and Volume 4 was 100 MB. A search led to a WindowsOSHub page that said the EFI volume “can easily be recognized by its size of 100 MB and FAT32 file […]

Berat August 9, 2018 - 12:46 pm

In my case when i type list disk command it just shows two disks. One is 0 byte sized disk0 and the other one is 8 gb sized usb. Is my harddisk broken?

admin August 13, 2018 - 9:50 am

Yes, apparently you have a problem with the disk, its controller or device driver.
Try to connect your HDD to another compute rand check if it is recognized.

abrise September 30, 2018 - 2:47 am

Thank you very much for this tutorial, it really has saved me after I broke the root of my surface pro 4 2017 when trying to getting rid of Phoenix os who has left behind root problems after uninstallation. Sartup automatic repair didn’t fix anything.
In my case
1 boot volume was volume 2 and is now still fat32 but over 300mb
2 I was very embarassed to see that command bootrec /fixboot didn’t work. Returning something like it couldn’t write. I decided to go on whith the procedure anyway and eventually recovered the Windows Boot Manager option.

JW December 31, 2018 - 3:57 pm

Finally! Using bcdboot as described from the built-in Recovery command prompt kept resulting in “Failure when attempting to copy boot files”. But using the same bcdboot from the Repair option of the Windows installation media WORKED!
BTW, isn’t mountvol k: /s a much easier way for mounting? (if that works)

michele March 28, 2019 - 4:25 pm

Recreate the boot sector on the boot partition

1 bootrec /fixboot
error: ACCESSO NEGATO

michele March 29, 2019 - 4:07 pm

why this?

Kunal June 1, 2019 - 4:44 pm

Thanks for this article.

In the last step when I try to use

bootrec /rebuildbcd

It identified the windows installation.

But when I say yes to ‘Add installation to boot list’

It fails saying ‘The requested system device cannot be found’

Thank you!

Sjjs June 11, 2019 - 11:34 pm

Thx a lot this worked

unni September 22, 2019 - 8:07 am

Havent been to H/W for very long and while moving my OS to SSD and then cleaning up my HDD i messed it up. Was quite confused about the solutions provided and i was getting errors because I was looking at wrong partitions. Never knew there is something called EFI partition too. This article helped a lot and find the exact partition which i should work with when all other articles didnt mention about EFI and how to find them in the Volume. Thanks a lot it worked after I ran bootrec /rebuildbcd on the EFI partition selecting the folder of EFI.

JULIANO GARCIA DA COSTA September 26, 2019 - 5:26 am

Perfeito , maravilha!!!

arthur brogard December 3, 2019 - 2:27 am

I have list disk: 0: 931Gb free 104kb
1: 3827 MB 960 kb * – that’d be kyhi usb i’m booting from
then list vol: 0 G DVDROM
1 C sys reserved NTFS Partition 500 MB
2 E NTFS Partition 930 GB
3 F NTFS Partition 467 MB Hidden
4 D FAT Removable 3825MB – this would be the usb
So no Fat 32 100MB EFI Volume and everything already labelled.
So what must I do?

michele December 23, 2019 - 2:15 pm

arrived at this step:
Recreate the boot sector on the boot partition

1 bootrec /fixboot
error: ACCESSO NEGATO
why this? any idea?
thanks

admin January 15, 2020 - 9:31 am

Just skip this step and move forward.

Marty January 19, 2020 - 9:14 am

After visiting and trying many suggestions on multiple websites, blah, blah.. came across this one and there were differences, so gave the above a go… and sorted. My EFI boot drive fixed and Windows boot back up.

Graham Atkinson January 30, 2020 - 1:36 pm

I get access is denied when I run “bootrec /fixboot”
Am I doing something wrong ?

James August 28, 2021 - 4:09 pm

Yeah, go to a better website than this one would be a good choice.

mrbiggerdick October 25, 2022 - 8:48 pm

ARSE!! best come across, No other I been to have given right fixs….THIS ONE HAS!

Adam March 4, 2020 - 2:23 am

I cannot thank you enough! I accidentally formatted my brother’s EFI partition in linux by selecting the wrong drive! I thought I was going to have to backup and reinstall his hard drive before he got home! great tutorial

Mark O March 12, 2020 - 2:34 pm

This was PURE genius-ry! This kept my sanity and above all, helped me with a very difficult situation —

THANK YOU

Harendra Rathore April 26, 2020 - 6:40 pm

Now this is the one i am looking for. The way of solving this problem is too much great and it worked well for me and i hope it worked for all the peoples.

nyari munda June 17, 2020 - 7:16 pm

Thanks buddie youre a genius! worked like a charm

Payam June 22, 2020 - 3:52 am

Thank you.

Very Nice

Balrog September 24, 2020 - 8:22 pm

Beware if you have optane on a gigabyte board, there is no solution. Reinstalling is mandatory. I dual boot win7 and 10, unplugging the drives is required when going between OSs. Otherwise win7 will see your win10 drive, but not the optane, and it will see an incomplete array and attempt to repair it, obliterating your install in the process. A bcd repair or manual reentry is impossible because the RAID is not visible to the system in recovery modes. It sees 2 separate drives, one with your files and the seemingly empty (but not really empty) optane drive, where the meta is held.

Optane is optional and if you run an SSD, you DON’T NEED I. Imho, optane is garbage.

JS December 5, 2020 - 6:41 am

Well I’m having this very issue – except I’m not dual booting but cloned my SSD from a Samsung to the Intel Optane. Now it won’t boot and doing this rebuildbcd thing didn’t work at all. Keep getting BSOD/boot failure.

Are you saying that there is no way to fix this on the Intel Optane? We have to clean install Win 10 all over again?

Toasty October 24, 2020 - 5:40 am

Absolute goddamn legends, saved me a week of rebuilding the system. A lot of the issues I was having with other forum entries was on spot with the whole “This and that wont work, but heres exactly why they wont, here’s what you’re really supposed to do and WHY it works”. Friggin legends ya’ll are.

Andy October 28, 2020 - 7:59 pm

Tried all the described scenarios to fix. Win 10.
happened all of a sudden. Teclast F7s pc
But no matter what I do I get boot error
EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
0x000000f

Manny November 1, 2020 - 9:05 am

Immensly helpful. I somehow corrupted my laptop’s EFI partition when creating a Windows Bootable usb. This article is fantastic. I learned a ton about what works and what doesn’t. Thank you deeply to your whole team, Manny.

pald December 11, 2020 - 1:13 pm

Thank you! Installing linux deleted the EFI files and could not have dualboot, I did as you said, and it works!

Adrian December 11, 2020 - 2:32 pm

I will echo the comments of several earlier commenters. My Windows 10 laptop was booting into a recovery page and none of the options that I tried could return me to normal Windows. After about 10 hours of visiting numerous websites and trying various hokey cokey programs that claimed to detect and fix problems. I found this page. With its clear explanations and step by step procedure for fixing the issue it solved my problem. If only I’d found it earlier!
I can’t thank you enough for creating this page. I thought several times that I would end up formatting my hard drive and reinstalling Windows. As it is, everything appears to be completely back to normal. And now I know about UEFI and the GPT partition table; I’d never heard of them before 🙂

croquart December 14, 2020 - 9:57 pm

Thank you. It worked after a lot of different solution attempts.

Note, for me, the
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /s K: /f ALL
didn’t work, but changing the drive letter to K: worked

bcdboot k:\Windows /l en-uk /s K: /f ALL

Nah December 27, 2020 - 6:24 pm

You rules BRO! I spent two days until see this post

Thank you so much. New subscriber!

Roger Vince December 30, 2020 - 2:41 pm

In relation to Windows 10 Updates

My last post was in April 2018 when this forum saved my bacon after I accidentally formatted the system partition. I’d like to share some information with anyone having problems with Windows 10 update.

It never occurred to me that what I did then was related to an ongoing problem of not being able to update from Windows 10 version 1709 no matter what I tried. Many of you will have already figured this out but for those having problems with Windows update this may be of some help.

It started recently when once again I wanted to update my desktop PC to the same Windows version as my laptop which never had problems with updating. I found I could not even get into Safe Mode; I could not access boot options in MSConfig, and no joy with F8. Other ways to interrupt the boot process did not work, it just went to BIOS setup.

Google searches showed many suggestions for getting into Safe Mode but to no avail, but clues were there to suspect it had something to do with the boot partition.

I found an article on the Minitool website – “Windows Safe Mode Not Working” and looking at the section ‘F8 Not Working Windows 10/8’ I tried running the following –

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

This resulted in –
The boot configuration data store could not be opened.
The requested system device cannot be found.

This confirmed suspicion about the EFI partition.

After much Googling and examining my PC –
Disk Management on my PC showed the System Partition was not labelled with EFI but showed as FAT32 Healthy (System, Primary Partition), but on my laptop the System Partition is labelled EFI. This implied that the PC was in Legacy Bios Mode which I thought was wrong, and running msinfo32 showed that BIOS Mode is UEFI.

With MiniDisk Partition Wizard I could look inside the Partition and all the EFI stuff was all there.
Searches on Google showed the GUID for an EFI Partition should be –
C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

Again using MiniDisk Partition Wizard –
My SP3 had the correct GUID, but the PC “EFI” Partition had a GUID of –
EBDOAOA2-BQE5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
which indicates a Basic Data Partition – aha!!!

After much trepidation, knowing what might happen, I used MiniDisk Partition Wizard to change the GUID to the correct EFI definition. HOORAY – all worked ok. Disk Management on my PC showed the System Partition was now labelled with EFI and I was able to boot into Safe Mode. Some days later, after first using Macrium Reflect to do a backup image of the Windows partitions, I tried doing a Windows Update.
SUCCESS..

Greg February 5, 2021 - 2:29 pm

I get to the last command (bcdboot C:\windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL ) and I get “failure when attempting to copy boot files”? When I try to boot into windows 10 I just get a black screen with a flashing cursor. When I hook this drive as a slave in another win 10 machine it shows in disk manager as follows: partition 1- 360 MB EFI partition, , 2- windows data partition, 3- 980 MB recovery partition, 4- 12.54 GB Recovery partition.

Roger Vince December 30, 2020 - 2:47 pm

Sorry, I forgot to say I’m wondering if the /f parameter of bcdboot command as in bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /s K: /f ALL should be set to /UEFI

Juscelino Alves de Carvalho January 9, 2021 - 11:09 am

The best tutorial about boot I ever seen
Thanks a lot!

Dušan Herman January 11, 2021 - 11:37 am

I would just like to say a BIG THANK YOU! You saved my Windows 7 installation with all the small little settings and apps I have inside. Thank you. I have a GPT record so I used the approach like you suggested, with copying and it worked. Saved me a lot of time. Cheers

Jayant January 24, 2021 - 10:28 pm

Thank you so so much

Greg February 5, 2021 - 1:58 pm

Lamprinakis L. February 6, 2021 - 7:47 am

Excellent! Thanks a lot.

Ricky February 10, 2021 - 6:54 pm

Absolutely has saved my pc in multiple situations. Very greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!

Leorick February 11, 2021 - 2:25 pm

Thanks a million, After my Ubuntu update fail, it somehow corrupted the EFI boot. Thanks to you.

Joao Duarte February 20, 2021 - 11:18 am

You are the best. thanks thanks thanks, you realy save my day

Mandy wu February 26, 2021 - 7:52 am

Excellent article. Worked in the first try.

Matheus March 7, 2021 - 1:35 pm

Tks a lot !!! You help me to fix a problem that I used to have every time

goaten March 10, 2021 - 3:59 pm

Hello, I need to rebuild bcd with files from my newly created Windows 10 media (on a USB), not the files from my Windows install, because they are half broken (PC is stuck at Welcome for 5 minutes after boot for no apparent reason, I’m pretty sure it’s bcd). Can someone give me the command for this? My Windows is C:, my system partition is K: and my USB is H:

Pep March 15, 2021 - 1:25 pm

Hello,
Since the last Windows 10 update, I have not been able to use my laptop because it is always trapped in this loop:
Preparing Automatic Repair … Diagnosing your PC!
None of the options in the Advanced Options worked.
There are no files in the C:\Windows\system32\config\regback folder either!
I tried to repair or reinstall Windows 10 from a USB, but it was not successful!
I want to know if I can resolve my issue by following the procedure taught on this web page, i.e., repair bootloader.
Thank you very much in advance for your time and consideration.

Exe April 4, 2021 - 11:12 am

Thank you so much. I have been struggling for 5-days until I found “WOSHUB.COM”.

Error keep poping up at this command 《[ bcdboot C:\windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL ]》

UNTIL I CHANGE “C to D”.

And every error gone.
All Became Successful !!!.

Thank Guys && Happy 2021 Easter.
Please Stay Safe.

Santi April 4, 2021 - 7:01 pm

First of all thank you for your guide. It gave me some hope…

I haved correctly perform all the steps until the bcdedit comprobation. I get a Couldnt open the boot configuration data location (BCD)
(Translated from spanish)

Thank you in advanced

J April 4, 2021 - 7:30 pm

You still get this message right?
The boot configuration data store could not be found.
The requested system device cannot be found.

Gil April 11, 2021 - 3:46 pm

You are the MAN!!! For so long doing everything wrong following dumbass es copy and paste bloggers all over the net and nobody specified the uses of the tools bcdedit and bcdboot, i am not tested yet but just with the fact that today I learned when to use those specific tools, it’s more than enough. Thanks a million brother!

catchcs April 20, 2021 - 4:38 am

Worked great. Awesome. Thank you!! Saved lot of time.

Ranen Naicker May 21, 2021 - 8:34 am

Thanks for this guide!

Helped me get my Windows 10 booting again after cloning to new drive.

Also learned a bit about UEFI and boot volumes!

Balakrishnan May 27, 2021 - 5:05 pm

Hi, Whoever wrote this post i am thanking them very much. it was create content and fixed lot of effort instead of going new windows installation.
AS you have MENTIONED, i have used three tools bcdedit, EasyUEFI, BOOTICEx64. I have mistankly remove the main bootrecord.

I have bookmarked this page

Thanks.

Lasith May 29, 2021 - 9:59 am

Good, clear, line by line explanation… It really worked as described and saved a lot of time to reinstall the Windows and all the apps… Thanks a lot…

Tecnotei May 31, 2021 - 4:52 am

I followed all commands without issues until this one, bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL. In my case the image installed seems to be Spanish Single Language and the bootable image i’m using is es-MX, in that case should i use bcdboot C:\Windows /l es-MX /s k: /f UEFI. i’m getting an error sating that the MUI couldn’t be copied. Then followed another recommendation and deleted the BCD file, so now it’s gone. Am I screwed? Or what would be the next command I can run to recreate the BCD file in K:\EFI\Microsoft\boot\ ?
Thanks

Trusted Source May 31, 2021 - 7:35 pm

There may be a BCD.bak left in one of the directories — rename it to BCD.

Tecnotei May 31, 2021 - 10:32 pm

Problem is that I deleted it. So what’s next?

Trusted Source June 4, 2021 - 4:50 pm

You can rebuild BCD and MBR manually for BIOS systems. I don’t know if rebuilding BCD / MBR for BIOS system then booting in Legacy mode would work. See https://woshub.com/how-to-rebuild-bcd-file-in-windows-10/.
What message do you get when you run bcdboot C:\Windows /s K: /f UEFI ?

Tony Neville June 30, 2021 - 7:33 am

Those instructions are very concise, and because you actually *explain* things, I can learn from the procedure. You helped me make Windows 10 bootable again. I’d give you a big sloppy kiss on the lips if I were that way oriented, but I’m not so you’re just out of luck.

Much appreciated.

Ranger June 30, 2021 - 10:03 am

Thank you very much for this detailed and easy to follow guide! It fixed my problem and Windows doesn‘t report any error anymore. All my files are there aswell.

Zoki OKi July 12, 2021 - 6:33 pm

Perfect. Using an ubuntu-live-usb-stick storting of WIN10 on a MSI GPT UEFI was corrupted. On internet there are many recommendations, which made the situation worse and worse.
However using your recommendation, step by step, the start file ESP in FAT 32 was recovered and win10 started again.
Thank you very much for very and only professional advise.
Best regards!

Hicham November 3, 2021 - 7:37 am

Hi Zoki, I have the same problem as yours and could fix the ESP in FAT32 following the pretty recommendations but I still cannot make Windows 10 starting.
Did you put the Ubuntu live usb again or just without it?
Thanks & Best Regards

ARCHBTW July 13, 2021 - 12:08 pm

Thanks a lot! I was able to recover windows 10 on my Dell Inspiron 15 5000 after the windows boot manager had gone missing during arch linux dual boot installation. I encountered 3 problems and this is how I solved them:
1> when I ran diskpart from live usb and entered “list disk” my ssd wasn’t visible. I solved it by opening up UEFI firmware settings and changed the RAID option to AHCE/NVME option in storage section. IMPORTANT: After following all of the steps change the storage settings back to RAID.
2> In my case EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ didn’t exist. In the EFI folder only \Dell and \GRUB (from my arch installation) was there. So I created \Microsoft\Boot directory using mkdir. Then did the steps mentioned.

Hicham November 3, 2021 - 7:47 am

Hi Archbtw,
I have the same computer and problem as yours and could fix the ESP in FAT32 following the pretty recommendations but I still cannot make Windows 10 starting.
Did you put the Ubuntu live usb again or just without it?
Would you please help me with this issue?
Could you have some minutes to talk on Whatsapp or messenger so we can fix it together…? it is really very urgent for my thesis work.

Thanks & Best Regards

Hicham November 3, 2021 - 8:11 am

Oh now I can start windows 10… ONLY AFTER CHANGING THE “SATA” SETTING TO “RAID” FROM “AHCI” IN UEFI firmware settings 🙂

BUT I am really afraid to continue the installation of Ubuntu, because it ask me to change to AHCI mode because “Intel RST” on my Dell inspiron does not work for ubuntu… Was it the same as for Arch Linux ?

Thanks
Hicham

Hicham November 3, 2021 - 8:14 am

Here is the link that suggested to modify the Intel RST:
https://help.ubuntu.com/rst/

ARCHBTW November 3, 2021 - 8:25 am

My arch install required me to load vmd module at boot to work with RAID. I don’t know about Ubuntu though.

mrpinda September 23, 2021 - 12:45 pm

Thanks a lot, it worked for me (windows 10 on a ACER desktop).

Bonang Tangkas Sinaga November 1, 2021 - 5:46 am

Alhamdulillah (WL). Thanks for the tips and guide. Thanks to this method, I finally didn’t have to reinstall windows 10 on my desktop computer. I am grateful to have found this valuable way so that it became the savior of my life. Once again, thanks for the tips and guidance. Good luck for the future.

Alhamdulillah. Terima Kasih Atas tips dan panduan nya. Berkat Cara ini, saya akhirnya tidak jadi install ulang windows 10 di komputer desktop saya. Saya bersyukur bisa menemukan cara berharga ini sehingga menjadi penyelamat hidup saya. Sekali lagi, terima kasih atas tips dan panduan nya. Sukses selalu.

Darek November 5, 2021 - 10:23 am

Any hint please for this error:
0xc0000225 system registry file is missing or contains errors?
\windows\system32\config\system

I see the file is not missing, but somehow the system is not able to boot. chkdsk shows no problems. How can I verify registry file integrity ?

Steve Weisner November 5, 2021 - 11:42 pm

Whoever you are, I owe you a case of beer!

I’m an IT professional but I was lost until until finding your article. After growing increasingly annoyed with my system being IO-bound, I had found some other instructions to the letter about how to migrate/clone from HDD to SSD. However, I had now idea that the instructions, utility software, troubleshooting tips, etc. were all irrelevant for a UEFI/GPT system. Way too many hours spent (aka wasted) following others’ instructions, running commands (bootrec), booting from the recovery disk, disconnecting/reconnecting the HDD cable, wandering around in the F2/BIOS (or UEFI or whatever it really is) when I actually had to make ZERO changes there, and doing troubleshooting without even knowing that the extra EFI partition is needed to boot from this SSD drive. Meanwhile, my stress level was maxed out knowing that if I accidentally pooched my spinning HDD without successfully getting the new SSD up and running that I would be faced with many, many more wasted hours reinstalling and rebuilding.

You provided a great explanation and commands that actually worked. Thank you!

James December 15, 2021 - 8:07 pm

You’re the man! Thanks a bunch.

K Ram January 3, 2022 - 8:23 am

I have been struggling for more than a month to get dual boot of Windows 10 two installations.
This solved it for me in half an hour.
Thanks a bunch.

Liam Austin January 4, 2022 - 1:31 pm

Thank you worked with my windows 10 PC

Anual bin Yaacob February 19, 2022 - 8:33 pm

Thank you boss. it’s work for me running windows 11. you are the man!!

Michael Tanczos February 21, 2022 - 3:59 pm

This was a lifesaver! People like you who take the time to illustrate these concepts step by step are the unsung heroes of the Internet. I’m a professional programmer and have put together countless systems as well and have cloned drives more than once. This got my cloned SSD back up and running in less than 10 minutes after trying and failing with bootloader “repair” tools.

Gary D February 21, 2022 - 9:06 pm

This method worked for me today.
Repaired a non-bootable laptop that had a fresh install of Windows 11 with UEFI and GPT disk.
Thank you !

Ahmed Hani March 11, 2022 - 2:26 am

Hello
I’m a bit confused with the steps, could you please help?
At first you selected volume 1 (FAT32) and assigned letter k to it than followed with several commands

At the end you were aiming to see the result on
Volume 2 not volume 1 which I thought that we are trying establish boot on the Volume 1 not Volume 2 which is System reserved

“An entry should appear in the Windows Boot Manager section containing the full path to the UEFI boot file (\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI). In this example, it is located on volume 2 (partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2).”

I had my end result on volume k

Also the volume d in the following command is supposed to be volume which you have installed windows

“Go to the bootloader directory on the hidden volume:
cd /d K:\efi\microsoft\boot\”

If I have my installed windows on partition c i should change the letter d with c?

My last question according to your image the volume 1 is FAT32, 100 mb and system EFI
But you say in that’s aka volume 5 shouldn’t be volume 1

“In this example, you can see that the EFI boot partition (it can be easily identified by the size of 100 MB, and the FAT32 file system, most often its label is System EFI) has the partition 2 index (aka Volume 5 with the Hidden label)”

Thank You for your great help and please help as I’m in desperate need to solve my boot issue

Thanks again

B W Don... June 30, 2022 - 8:19 pm

I had the same problem – in Windows Boot Manager, the “device” line shows as “patition=K:”, not as shown in the instructions. How did you resolve this?

Igor September 28, 2022 - 5:58 am

I had the same concerns an my device saying partition=k: instead of partition=\device\harddiskvolume5

But after some research, I found out they both mean the same thing. This just points to the hard drive. Wether you point using the drive letter or the volume number, it doesn’t matter.

This was a point of contention for me, because I had done everything instructed and this was the only thing not matching up. But be assured, that is not your issue. What ended up eventually helping me was this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-bootrec-fixboot-access-is-denied/747c4180-7ff3-4bc2-b6cc-81e572d546df

The instructions above fix your BCD file, but in the link above, it basically fixes ALL the files. Just make sure you are replacing the drive letters with the appropriate ones. You don’t want to accidentally reformat and delete your entire hard drive, just the FAT32 EFI partition, which should be K: if you followed the tutorial here

James March 17, 2022 - 10:56 am

You just saved my life! Tried multiple other guides and nothing worked. Yours worked first time. Thank you.

Joe Brayn April 28, 2022 - 12:28 pm

I love you and I’d like to buy you a steak dinner. Worked like a charm!

Shanno May 8, 2022 - 10:23 pm

You are a genius!
Thank you so much. 😊

Seychelle June 16, 2022 - 2:22 am

THANK YOU! Saved me on an SSD replacement.

Stef June 20, 2022 - 1:43 pm

you saved my day !!!

Sarg June 22, 2022 - 9:58 am

Worked like a charm. I have a dual boot Ubuntu 22.04/Windows 10, and grub stopped working after updating to windows 11, and after using Ubuntu boot repair the windows boot manager wouldn’t work anymore. Thanks a lot!

Captain June 26, 2022 - 9:53 pm

I wanted to make sure to thank you for this post as you allowed me to recover my broken Windows 10 installation. Thank you!

B W Don... June 30, 2022 - 8:56 pm

This was GREAT!!! Thanks to the experts who figured this out and took the time to document it to help everyone else.

A couple of questions remain.
1) As in my comment/reply above (to AHMED HANI on March 11, 2022), the Windows Boot Manager config isn’t as shown in the instructions. However, it seems to work so I am alive again!
2) Near the very beginning, we assigned drive letter K to the hidden EFI volume. There were not steps to undo that. Is that needed? Will it prevent me from using drive K in the future?
3) … and if I remove it in number 2, will it screw up the config in #1?

Thanks for the wisdom of the experts.

MJJ July 26, 2022 - 10:07 pm

WOW, this totally saved me. Thank you! All the other guides just tell you the bare minimum on what to do ie just type bootrec /fixboot blah blah blah. This article however gets into the true details on what to do! Massive thanks!

Pomnabo September 4, 2022 - 3:12 pm

So I’m not super well versed in this level of computing. Any help would be appreciated!

I updated my computer 3 days ago, and the next morning it wouldn’t startup the whole way; a full day of of google searches led me to here, which is providing heaps more information than anywhere else! (So thank you!)

I seem to be confused though. I got as far as “DISKPART”
“DISKPART> list partition”
“DISKPART> list volume”

But I don’t know how to get to the next step. *I DO have GPT* so I know this guide is for me. I don’t have FAT32. This is what I have:

> list partition
Partition 1 system
Partition 2 reserved
Partition 3 primary
Partition 4 recovery
Partition 5 primary

> list volume
Volume 0 E
Volume 1 C
Volume 2 F Windows RE
Volume 3 D RECOVERY
Volume 4

I don’t know how to proceed.

I barely know how to operate command prompt. All I know is that I’m currently “in” DISKPART, and I don’t understand how to move onto the next step. All I see for that step is “X: /sources>dir C:\”

Please help?

Jake H September 28, 2022 - 1:21 am

Do you still need help as this was a while ago?
Feel free to reply back if you need, I’ll try my best

It looks like your volume 4 is the volume 5 in this guide
Assign a letter to volume 4 and continue with the guide

Pomnabo July 11, 2023 - 7:04 am

Hi, yes I still need help with this issue. I ended up having to purchase a new computer but I still want to be able to use my other one. If you can help me that would be superb! Please let me know how to contact you perhaps?

Oleh September 9, 2022 - 7:14 am

Thank you. It really helped me to recover laptop.

Johannes September 25, 2022 - 2:39 pm

You saved my life, keep up the good work!😘

Adama September 26, 2022 - 10:46 am

Thank you very much 🙏🏽

Jake H September 28, 2022 - 1:19 am

THANK YOU!
Somehow, some way my OS wouldn’t boot. Idk what happened.
I had Win10 on my M.2, bought anlther sata ssd and put pop os on it.
Used pop os for a few days, restarted and got the boot media screen 🤔.

I followed tutorials all day,im not joking. 6+hrs Burning hirens boot cd and using partitioning tools, the mbr tools. Installing grub just to try and get into windows.. Turning UEFI to legacy, and back. Trying different bbs options in the bios. Loads of things..
Every other website was listing /fixmbr etc which resulted in the access denied.

This tutorial here saved me. I can’t thank you enough. I remade an EFI partition ,used the commands (bcdedit didn’t work, so thought it was useless but restarted anyway) and my wallpaper loaded and just a rush of joy and relief. Ahhh thank youuu soo much.

Dan October 17, 2022 - 2:30 pm

I did everything and windows restarted but it is now stuck at a blue screen with the clock and date in white, when i click my mouse it becomes entirely blue with 3 options on bottom right to change language ao restart shutdown it. Can’t do any of these, I’m stucked here

ob November 8, 2022 - 4:03 pm

you save me from a big trouble. thanks A LOT

John November 26, 2022 - 7:36 pm

Worked like a charm, thank you!!

Max December 13, 2022 - 5:35 pm

Thank a lot,

when I type the command bcdedit it lists partition=K: instead of partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume5 in the Windows boot manger section.
How can I change this?

Lars-Erik April 13, 2023 - 12:27 pm

Got the same problem. No absoulute path. Just lists “partition=K:” instead 🙁

A grateful anon December 18, 2022 - 5:36 am

I don’t usually comment on stuff like this, but I just need to say: THANK YOU! This guide was incredibly helpful, you’re a lifesaver

Carol February 4, 2023 - 1:31 pm

Are there steps in this document that are “pointlessly run DISKPART LIST VOLUME” (and do nothing with the results).

Am I trying to assign a drive-letter to which:
My SYSTEM partition
My RECOVERY partition
My WINDOWS partition
My RESERVE partition
My PRIMARY partition

Viper February 15, 2023 - 2:19 pm

I have worked in IT before MOST of you were born and this is by far the BEST and most detailed set of instructions to restore a dead drive and keep it from becoming a brick. Kudos to the author for not leaving out a single step (including what ifs) in the process of creating this documents!

Wesley Souza February 27, 2023 - 9:43 pm

thank you very much for the article, I cloned an ssd and the efi was on an HHD , this allowed me to boot from the new ssd , thank you very much, I owe you a beer kkkk

Kevin McD March 5, 2023 - 1:52 pm

Thank you very much!

I was just having a big issue on the last step:
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-GB /s K: /f ALL

Then I ran it on the bootloader volume with some revision as mentioned below, after also failed the SFC SCANNOW many times.
Somehow it worked like a charm.
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-UK /s K: /f ALL
(en-UK instead of en-GB)

P.S.
Typo correction: SCANNOW instead of SCANOW

Mj March 16, 2023 - 8:21 pm

Just wanted to say thanks 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Checked 10 different guide and yours finally fixed it.

Steve March 23, 2023 - 9:20 pm

Thank you! I’m a little out of touch with UEFI stuff and GPT partitions but my ASUS A17 running the latest win11 wouldn’t resume (hibernate is disabled, it was just asleep) so I forced it off and then it booted immediately to bluescreen. I pulled the nvme and plugged it into another PC and other than the drive letter being missing, all the partitions and data was there.
Automatic repair didn’t work and when I got to renaming the BCD file it was “in use”. After a reboot it was available to rename and I used DISKPART to change my drive letters back to C, D and bootable usb E. Assigned K to the FAT32 partition and the whole thing just worked. Booted right back to my install with nothing changed.

Thank you very much for this excellent guide. I *really* didn’t want to reinstall and you’ve saved me probably 2 hours of reinstalling and customisation.

Someone in Indonesia March 29, 2023 - 8:49 pm

thanks a lot.. its work. i have win 11. my problem was i was trying to install ubuntu via usb flash drive and do restart with shift (i think its windows recovery mode). Then it do restart, go to bios option -> legacy usb -> linux grub menu, then accidentally i was pressed power button (restart) then.. – poof! – windows boot manager is gone from boot option. you saved me.. i think i am gonna loss my windows.. its going to bootloop, into windows recovery mode. may god bless u bro

Matthew April 7, 2023 - 6:54 am

Thank you this information was extremely helpful.

Yablos April 10, 2023 - 9:32 am

Made my day man!.
My win stopped booting after deleteting system partition(200MB) on secondary HDD and wont boot from primary SSD. Both disks are GPT/EFI. Volumme letters in diskpart was a little messy(os located on “f:”), but thanks to this tutorial, it make sense how to fix it.
Thank You 🙂

Henrique Custódia May 3, 2023 - 1:00 pm

Perfect solution! Many thanks!
After follow a lot of YouTube videos tutorials showing how to fix my windows bootloader setup, just your article helped me.
Most of the solutions are using MBR disks and it would never work on a GPT disk.
Have you ever thought to create a YouTube video to show all these steps? It will help a lot of people!
Thank you again 🙂

DANIEL May 9, 2023 - 3:48 pm

Didn’t even work. Thanks anyway.

Rock shouldnt think May 9, 2023 - 3:52 pm

Device just says “partition=k:” and there’s no path at all.
“My job here is done” but you didn’t do anything.

Guess I’m stuck starting my computer by smashing F12 and booting through Windows Boot Manager. Everyday.
Unless this mess that up…

Thomas Horsten June 1, 2023 - 6:31 pm

Thanks, this helped me fix Windows boot on a MacBook Pro 2019 after having used GParted to increase the Windows partition size

Heart Attack June 2, 2023 - 10:04 pm

OMFG, it worked! As complicated as the instructions were, my laptop boots again after I tried to clone my HDD to an SSD with Macrium Reflect which somehow corrupted the HDD! I don’t know how and why, and it’s the very first this happened, although I’ve done this process dozens of times before.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

TLM June 26, 2023 - 11:43 pm

Awesome guide, worked perfectly!

Syed Own Abbas July 10, 2023 - 5:09 pm

You are life saver

flow July 11, 2023 - 5:29 am

just want to say thank you.

Airswimmer September 28, 2023 - 2:14 pm

Thanks a lot man you’re a true saviour!!!

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