Cannot boot..and yet

One machine failed to boot this morning. and yet..Windows is
sufficiently alive to put up the screen notifying me of the failure. It
reports that a device necessary for boot is inaccessible (but, in finest
Redmond tradition, doesn't clue me in as to which one). When I've had
the primary disk fail before it didn't get beyond BIOS. BIOS lists all
the drives (three). I will make another repair disk. The one I had won't
boot on any machine I have. I have some other bootable discs to try with
different tools but I haven't tried them yet. I was surprised at the
message. The failure code is 8000000F. I haven't yet been able to find
an explanation but I don't expect I'll find much when I do.

On 7/17/2015 9:07 AM, Jason wrote:
One machine failed to boot this morning. and yet..Windows is
sufficiently alive to put up the screen notifying me of the failure. It
reports that a device necessary for boot is inaccessible (but, in finest
Redmond tradition, doesn't clue me in as to which one). When I've had
the primary disk fail before it didn't get beyond BIOS. BIOS lists all
the drives (three). I will make another repair disk. The one I had won't
boot on any machine I have. I have some other bootable discs to try with
different tools but I haven't tried them yet. I was surprised at the
message. The failure code is 8000000F. I haven't yet been able to find
an explanation but I don't expect I'll find much when I do.


When this happened to me late last year, it appeared that I was infected
with a virus. I had to get my PC guru to visit and reinstall Windows.
This meant reinstalling all of my applications. Fortunately, that
affected only the C-drive. The D-drive still held all my data and was
not affected.

--
David E. Ross

Why do we tolerate political leaders who
spend more time belittling hungry children
than they do trying to fix the problem of
hunger? http://mazon.org/

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 09:38:56 -0700, David E. Ross wrote:

On 7/17/2015 9:07 AM, Jason wrote:
One machine failed to boot this morning. and yet..Windows is
sufficiently alive to put up the screen notifying me of the failure. It
reports that a device necessary for boot is inaccessible (but, in
finest Redmond tradition, doesn't clue me in as to which one). When
I've had the primary disk fail before it didn't get beyond BIOS. BIOS
lists all the drives (three). I will make another repair disk. The one
I had won't boot on any machine I have. I have some other bootable
discs to try with different tools but I haven't tried them yet. I was
surprised at the message. The failure code is 8000000F. I haven't yet
been able to find an explanation but I don't expect I'll find much when
I do.


When this happened to me late last year, it appeared that I was infected
with a virus. I had to get my PC guru to visit and reinstall Windows.
This meant reinstalling all of my applications. Fortunately, that
affected only the C-drive. The D-drive still held all my data and was
not affected.

There are a number of virus checkers which run from linux boot media. I
like the one from AVG, it will optionally update virus definitions once
loaded.
http://free.avg.com/us-en/226162

Jason wrote:

One machine failed to boot this morning. and yet..Windows is
sufficiently alive to put up the screen notifying me of the failure. It
reports that a device necessary for boot is inaccessible (but, in finest
Redmond tradition, doesn't clue me in as to which one). When I've had
the primary disk fail before it didn't get beyond BIOS. BIOS lists all
the drives (three). I will make another repair disk. The one I had won't
boot on any machine I have. I have some other bootable discs to try with
different tools but I haven't tried them yet. I was surprised at the
message. The failure code is 8000000F. I haven't yet been able to find
an explanation but I don't expect I'll find much when I do.

If you have a floppy drive, make sure there isn't a diskette in it. If
you have an optical drive, make sure there isn't a disc in it. The BIOS
may list the drives but is the boot order specified in the BIOS okay
(i.e., it includes the boot HDD with the OS partition and perhaps is the
first boot device)?

Have you hit F5 or F8 (I forget which one) when booting (you might have
to continually tap the key) to get into the Windows boot menu and
selected safe mode to see if you can boot that way?

VanguardLH wrote:

Jason wrote:

One machine failed to boot this morning. and yet..Windows is
sufficiently alive to put up the screen notifying me of the failure. It
reports that a device necessary for boot is inaccessible (but, in finest
Redmond tradition, doesn't clue me in as to which one). When I've had
the primary disk fail before it didn't get beyond BIOS. BIOS lists all
the drives (three). I will make another repair disk. The one I had won't
boot on any machine I have. I have some other bootable discs to try with
different tools but I haven't tried them yet. I was surprised at the
message. The failure code is 8000000F. I haven't yet been able to find
an explanation but I don't expect I'll find much when I do.

If you have a floppy drive, make sure there isn't a diskette in it. If
you have an optical drive, make sure there isn't a disc in it. The BIOS
may list the drives but is the boot order specified in the BIOS okay
(i.e., it includes the boot HDD with the OS partition and perhaps is the
first boot device)?

Have you hit F5 or F8 (I forget which one) when booting (you might have
to continually tap the key) to get into the Windows boot menu and
selected safe mode to see if you can boot that way?

Oh, and unplug all USB devices (external drive, printer, flash drive)
when booting.

In article , says...
get into the Windows boot menu and
selected safe mode


Can't do that. I get the failure notification page from Windows and
that's all.

Jason wrote:
In article , says...
get into the Windows boot menu and
selected safe mode


Can't do that. I get the failure notification page from Windows and
that's all.

So let's talk about setup.

Does it have a System Reserved (with boot manager contained therein) ?

Is Bitlocker full disk encryption turned on ?

It could be, the message is coming from the boot manager and
not "Windows" as such.

I'm getting nothing legible using 8000000F in a search.

*******

Before you do anything, is the setup backed up on disk somewhere ?
You could capture the drive with dd or ddrescue just in case.
From a Linux DVD.

If you use a Windows rescue CD (to boot to Command Prompt),
it could examine the BCD, get the identifier for C:, try
to log into C and not be able to access the thing. In which
case, you'll not be able to get to a Command Prompt, and
the rescue CD will claim there is no Windows installation
for it to log into. I think I got the same sort of
response, when trying to get to Command Prompt, while
working on a WinXP disk (which doesn't have BCD and uses
boot.ini instead). So even the rescue CD is going to
go squirrel-like, depending on how disturbed your
partitions are. It needs to see enough of a conventional
setup, to give you access.

TestDisk can scan and find partitions, and the neat thing
is, even if a partition cannot be conventionally mounted,
it can show you the files on the partition. This is good
if you need some assurance there is something worth
recovering on there.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

And you can always pull the drive, and plug it into another
PC to work on it, and examine what remains of the structure,
and guess at why it isn't starting.

*******

You can attempt automatic rescue, where the installer DVD
attempts to fix the BCD, and up to three tries can be used
to get it running. On the third try, the rescue procedure
will use CHKDSK and do a sector by sector read and repair.
My suspicion is, occasionally this is going to result in
a more messed up situation. And I wouldn't do that,
depending on the backup situation, and whether you have
a fallback to rely on.

Paul

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:26:19 +0000 "Stormin' Norman"
wrote in article

How do you know the error notification is being generated by windows?


It looks just like all the other boot screens Windows puts up, for
example when you want to boot to safe mode or recover a restore point.
I'm certain it's Windows.

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 16:35:29 -0400 "Paul" wrote in
article

So let's talk about setup.

Does it have a System Reserved (with boot manager contained therein) ?

Not any more...

Is Bitlocker full disk encryption turned on ?

Nope.


It could be, the message is coming from the boot manager and
not "Windows" as such.

I suspect that's true - something loaded before Windows boots.

I'm getting nothing legible using 8000000F in a search.

I didn't either.

*******

Before you do anything, is the setup backed up on disk somewhere ?
You could capture the drive with dd or ddrescue just in case.

I have good backups of everything.

I was able to boot a repair disk and run chkdsk /f from a command prompt.
It found a handful of errors with the allocation bitmap for C: (the SSD)
and repaired them.

System now boots normally!!!

Jason wrote:

I have good backups of everything.

I was able to boot a repair disk and run chkdsk /f from a command prompt.
It found a handful of errors with the allocation bitmap for C: (the SSD)
and repaired them.

System now boots normally!!!

Did you have a power fail event ?

Seems strange for a modern OS to not be able
to shut down a storage device properly.

Paul

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 18:49:09 -0400 "Paul" wrote in
article

Did you have a power fail event ?

Seems strange for a modern OS to not be able
to shut down a storage device properly.

Nope. I left the machine on all night but the network was disconnected so
I don't think anything sneaked in while I was sleeping. I shutdown
(normally) and booted it this morning when it reported the error. As I
said one post earlier, chkdsk -f managed to repair the damage - among the
files it fixed were a couple of \Windows\System32 entries that may have
caused the boot failure.

Jason

On 17 Jul 2015, Jason wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

Nope. I left the machine on all night but the network was
disconnected so I don't think anything sneaked in while I was
sleeping. I shutdown (normally) and booted it this morning when it
reported the error. As I said one post earlier, chkdsk -f managed
to repair the damage - among the files it fixed were a couple of
\Windows\System32 entries that may have caused the boot failure.

When CHKDSK claims to have "fixed" a file, what it really means is that
it fixed the inconsistencies in the file system, IOW, everything is now
properly cataloged and accounted for. In the process, though, the files
themselves are often corrupted for good. If you find any new files
called FILE0001.CHK or similar or folders called FOUND.000 or similar,
you might possibly find those to be your missing files, and they might
be usable again if you rename them. But don't count on it.

In other words, CHKDSK is a last resort utility and should be used with
care.

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:45:31 -0500 "VanguardLH" wrote in
article


Have you hit F5 or F8 (I forget which one) when booting (you might have
to continually tap the key) to get into the Windows boot menu and
selected safe mode to see if you can boot that way?

I couldn't boot a thing. As soon as the machine started it reported that
hal.dll was corrup. That's a critical component of Windows, so no wonder
it didn't work.

I restored the C: partition, but still had the error. I then restored the
"system reserved" partition and it booted. I guess there's a copy of
hal.dll there.

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:13:41 -0400 "Nil" rednoise9
@REMOVETHIScomcast.net wrote in article XnsA4DAC3995B947nilch1
@wheedledeedle.moc
In other words, CHKDSK is a last resort utility and should be used with
care.


I understand and agree. chkdsk did not leave any file fragment files
behind, so I presumed it succeeded. The machine boots now, since I
restored the "system reserved" 100MB partition. It kept complaining that
hal.dll was corrupt. That's a very important Windows component, so no
wonder... I restored it to \system32 but that didn't seem to work. I then
restored the "system reserved" partion where the boot stuff resides and
now it boots. Is there a copy of hal.dll there? Anyway, I'm running
diagnostics on the Samsung SSD, because I'm still suspicious that it's
failing.