Hi All. I have been trying to get my HD to boot for over a week now. It crashed when I updated to Win10 from 7, and then tried to go back to 7. I have tried restoring and it did nothing. I have tried numereojus things like making sure the BIOS boot settings are correct, making sure I have the correct partition marked as active, system repairs (100 times), using the Bootrec command many times, Bootedit, sfc /scannow, chkdsk and more. Where I am stuck right is that when I try to boot from the drive, I get an error message that says: File: \windows\system32\config\system System registry is missing or corrupt. Status: 0xc000014c In spite of everything I've done, I can't get it to boot. I've had other error too, Status 0xc0000225, or 0xc00000f, or file \boot\bcd Status 0xc0000034 I am desperate to recover my files/emails etc and I think I should be able to get the HD to boot but am not having any success yet. Any ideas or suggestions ? Thanks.
Have you tried safe mode? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode From your description without a backup/image of the system my feeling is that you might have lost all of your data, but then again hopefully somebody might be able to help you with the info you have supplied... Also this: https://social.technet.microsoft.co...o-start-status0xc000014c?forum=w7itproinstall
That doesn't look good. But as a last resort, you can always use any Boot- / Recovery-CDs to recover your data: http://alphabetnews.org/index.php/2016/03/17/top-10-best-rescue-disks-windows-system-restore/ You'd need a friend's computer, burn the iso to CD/USB stick. Boot your computer from that CD/USB stick and you should get access to your files.
pratzert, In another thread I suggested you mount your Win7 image as a virtual drive to recover your files. Did it work?
Did you try booting the win 7 disc, choosing repair>advanced>command prompt- from command prompt CMD> bootrec /scanos CMD> bootrec /rebuildbcd CMD> bootrec /fixmbr CMD> bootrec /fixboot
Thanks gambla. Do you think I should try each one in the order they are listed, until I try them all or have success.... whichever comes first? I tried to D/L Hiren's and when I extracted onto a SUB drive, I could not get the desktop to boot saying the drive (USB) didn't have an operating system on it. But yet, I could see an ISO on the flash drive. I thought it would boot of an ISO image.... no ?
Hi BrianK. I have to admit my lack of knowledge on this.... I don't know how to mount Win7 image as a virtual drive. Not sure where or how to start this or where my Win7 image can be found. Thanks for any guidance.
Hi chrome_sturmen, Yes, I have tried all of those commands without any success. Something that puzzles me, is that the commands say they have completed successfully, but at the same time, state they could not find a windows installation. But when I boot using a Win7 CD, the system restorer options indicates a Windows 7 partition as (C OS. But when I ran the bootrec commands, they returned a message that there were zero Windows installations identified, but yet, the "operation completed successfully".
If worst comes to worst, you can always take that hard drive and put it in an external enclosure, connect it to another computer and get your data off of it that way - that, or connect the drive as a 2nd hard drive if it's a tower computer and get the data that way Or if you don't want to physically change the drive - download hiren's boot cd, then create a bootable usb using Rufus. Hiren's boot cd has a mini-xp environment that should give you access to your files
I have another desktop that is almost the same model at home and I could take the drive out of the one that's not booting and install it on the one at home as a second drive. Would the data be readable as documents, emails etc., or will I still need to use some sort of file/data recovery software? In the meantime, I found a system restore Image on my data drive and I can ry one more time to recover using the image if it is not corrupted. I had created it using the Windows image program and placed it on my second (Data) drive. What do you think ? Should I try the image restore or just try to recover the Data by placing the drive in another machine ?
The data on the non-bootable hard drive should be viewable as normal data once you hook it up as a 2nd hard drive, you should be able to browse and find your files - I doubt windows 10 would have erased your data during the upgrade process unless you told it to do so (you didn't). Just because the boot files got hosed doesn't mean the entire contents of the hard drive are gone also. Still, even if there was a problem with your data, you'll be in a much better position to recover the files now that you'll be able to access the disk contents
You can also try installing a Linux distro like Puppy Linux which will allow you to look into Windows and recover any data that is visible...
Thanks. Nothing to lose if I remove the drive and install it on my other machine. I was going to try to image restore, but I'll try moving the drive first.
Is there anything "special" I need to do after installing the old corrupted OS HDD in the other desktop? After I boot, will the old drive magically appear, or do I need to enter ay disk/partitions commands? Thanks again to everyone for the help. I appreciate it!
No you shouldn't need to do anything special, once you connect the 2nd hard drive the OS should detect it and add it to your list of hard drives, where then you should be able to browse it and find your files. It's possible but not likely that once you add the hard drive, the motherboard may try to boot to it instead of your original disk in that system - if that happens, just go into the bios and make sure the correct hard disk is selected for boot (not likely to occur though)
chrome_sturman, Thanks for the help. I going to try to put the drive in my other system tonight. I'll report on my success. Regards.
pratzert, Did you create the Win7 image on a USB external HD? It will be in a root folder called... WindowsImageBackup You can connect this external HD to another computer and extract files from the Win7 image You can also extract files by installing your HD in another computer as you plan to do tonight. After you have recovered your files we should try restoring your image to the original HD in the original computer. It seems an error was made during the previous restore. It should have worked.
Hi Brian K. I actually created an Image on my second HDD I my desktop that I used as Data storage. I figured that if I needed the Image it would be because the drive that had my OS on it was possible trashed, so I saved it on the other drive. It's kinda old (April, 2016), but it's better than losing everything on the drive. I don't know what condition the image may be in, it may be fine, or it may be corrupted...... but Once I see how well I do installing the non-booting drive in my other system, I may put the drive back in the original desktop and try restoring from the image, nothing to lose at that point. Thanks !
Having the image on a second HD is fine. Do you recall which partitions are on the Win7 HD? Do you have a System Reserved Partition?
I don't recall off hand, but I think it had 4 partitions. Maybe I can look at it when I get it mounted in the other desktop.