Boot error loop -> /rebuildbcd error and cant set active volume

Question

Background

After my sister's three months of vacation with no internet access, she got home and there were many updates for Windows 10 and Norton installed.
After reboot Windows didn't start. Instead "the boot configuration data is missing some required information" showed up.
I got a photo of it, but can't read the error code. It's something like 0x0000? The file is BCD though.

To solve this, her dude added her SSD disk in his own computer and according to them some sort of repair process finished successfully.

Then he put her SSD back in her laptop, after Windows automatic repair process it got stuck and Windows complains about RecEnv.exe "memory could not be read" (RecEnv.exe is Windows recovery environment).

Here is my diskpart list

Things I've done

• I have created a Windows 10 32/64bits UEFI GPT formatted bootable USB so I can get to the command prompt

• Memory tests through HPs utility have passed

• CHKDSK /R passed; no bad sectors on all discs.
• Sfc /scannow reaches verification 100% complete, but error:

Windows resource protection could not perform the requested operation

• bootrec /fixmbr ok
• bootrec /fixboot ok
• bootrec /rebuildbcd error:

The requested system device cannot be found

• After this I tried to assign volume 4 the FAT32 disc letter N:
• bcdboot bcdboot c:\windows /l sv-se /s N: error:

cannot copy boot files

UPDATE

• bcdboot bcdboot c:\windows /l sv-se /s N: /F ALL BFSVC Error:

Failed to validate boot manager checksum (C:Windows\boot\EFI\bootmgfw.efi)!
Error code = 0xc1 Failure when attempting to copy boot files

So something is wrong with bootmgfw.efi. How do I solve that?

I copied the bootmgfw.efi from X:\windows\boot\efi to the same folder on the C: partition and VOILA! then I was able to bcdboot bcdboot c:\windows /l sv-se /s N: /F ALL

Next problem Windows can't start because of ntosext.sys error code 0x000007b. Seems like the whole Windows has been messed up somehow.

Answer 1

Method 1:

Since you fixed your BCD store and now you are able to boot, I assume some kind of file corruption happened during the update process. If you are lucky, there's chance that windows have kept a shadow copy (a.k.a Last Know Good Configuration), which is a snapshot of the state of the system files, in which windows was able to boot successfully. But to make it possible on windows 10, you have to enable legacy boot menu in BCD, which allows for accessing advanced options upon boot by pressing F8. Follow the instructions:

1.Insert and boot from Windows 10 Installation Media.

2.When the screen to install windows appears, press Shift+F10 to open command line.

3.Assign a letter to your EFI system partition:

diskpart
select disk D (where 'D' is the disk number)
select partition P (where 'P' is your EFI partition, in your case 4)
assign letter N
exit

Note: Correct disk and partition numbers can be decided by enumerating disks and partitions, respectively by running following commands inside diskpart context:

list disk
list partition

4.Active legacy boot menu by running:

bcdedit /store N:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD /set {default} bootmenupolicy Legacy

5.If you've got a success message, reboot and press F8 continuously until the boot menu appears.

6.If you see Last Known Good Configuration, choose it and press 'Enter'.

Warning!: Please consider that it reverts back your system files and settings to a previous state, so some settings may need to be reconfigured and some installed applications might no longer be installed.

Method 2:

If you don't see Last Known Good Configuration in Advanced Boot Menu, or it doesn't fix the problem, you can try to fix system files by DISM:

1.Insert and boot from Windows 10 Installation Media.

2.When the screen to install windows appears, press Shift+F10 to open command line.

3.If not already assigned, assign a drive letter to Windows Partition:

diskpart
select disk D (where 'D' is the disk number)
select partition P (where 'P' is your Windows partition)
assign letter C (Where 'C' is a free drive letter to assign)
exit

Note: Correct disk and partition numbers can be decided by enumerating disks and partitions, respectively by running following commands inside diskpart context:

list disk
list partition

4.Run the following command and wait for it to complete succesfully:

dism /image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:wim:D:\sources\install.wim:1 /limitaccess

Note: C:\ is the drive letter of Windows partition, D:\ is the drive letter of installation media and :1 after install.wim is the index number of windows edition inside installation media and must correspond to the same windows edition installed. (e.g install.wim:2, install.wim:3,...)

Answer 2

The answer is:

We have GPT disk and UEFI boot and NO active partition!

ESP - UEFI System partition is on volume 4 (format FAT32!).

You can assign a drive letter to volume 4 by selecting it and "ASSIGN" using diskpart.exe.

And the command for fixing:

bcdboot c:\windows /l sv-se /s N:

where N: is the drive letter of mapped volume 4 (could be another drive letter like G:, H:) and sv-se is locale for swedish in Sweden(?) could be sv-fi(?).

You could try Dual-boot Repair tool, "Automatic Repair" for fixing this on click. Download and unzip to any folder, then run it from there - the tool is portable (needs .NET 2 or 4 to be installed in booted OS so the tool cannot run from normal PE unless .NET 2 was added!).

---

EDIT: For a successful boot for Windows 8/10 from GPT disk there should be as minimum:

1) EFI System partition (FAT32) - very special partition

2) MS Reserved partition (not formatted) - even more special

3) OS partition (NTFS) - usual

Did you omit copying these partitions?

DISKPART> list par

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Recovery           300 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    System             100 MB   301 MB
  Partition 3    Reserved           128 MB   401 MB
  Partition 4    Primary             60 GB   529 MB
  Partition 5    Primary             50 GB    80 GB
  Partition 6    Primary             49 GB   130 GB 

for example. Partition 2 is EFI System partition, partition 3 is MSR.

EDIT2:

If you use external media with Windows 10 for fixing you should boot external media the UEFI way!

I assume Windows 10 on disk is 64-bit and external media is Windows 10 64-bit installation USB - correct?

What did you do to create the boot problem? Installed some software? Changed some setting? Windows update?

Please edit your question with details what action led to the problem.