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My computer won't boot into Windows 10 because the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\samsungrapidfsfltr.sys file is corrupt and it cannot repair it.

Can I somehow tell Windows to ignore that file? Or can I repair it somehow without a bootable system?

I can boot into my Linux Mint just fine, so I have the option of repairing it from that.

Safe mode is not working either.

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  • I wonder if you can extract it from the Samsung Magician download
    – Bob
    Oct 26, 2016 at 15:39
  • @Bob - It doesn't seem to be directly accessible in the Magician software extract.. But good guess.
    – Frederik
    Oct 26, 2016 at 15:44
  • It is, but it's a bit fiddly to get to. I've included some instructions in my answer. Let me know if you need more assistance getting to it, if you want.
    – Bob
    Oct 26, 2016 at 16:36

2 Answers 2

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System Restore

System Restore tries to back up most drivers. It's a fairly safe option to try first. You can do so from the recovery console, or by booting from DVD/USB.

Manually disabling the filter driver

Note that this is mostly speculation, as I do not have a system with Rapid enabled that i can test with. I assume that it's added as a filter driver, and that it's also been added to Safe Mode ("SafeBoot Minimal") for whatever reason.

This is a somewhat risky operation. It's best that you make sure all your important data, and preferably the whole drive, is backed up. There's a chance that forcibly disabling the driver can cause data corruption, but I doubt it - IIRC "Rapid" was just memory caching, which does not persist across restarts.

Since you cannot boot into Windows, you'll have to find a boot environment that'll allow you to modify registry hives directly.

The entries you'll want to edit is within the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM hive, which is stored in \Windows\System32\config\system. Back up that file before editing it using your preferred offline registry editor.

You'll want to head into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services and see if you can find the filter driver in there - it'll be one of the keys (folders). Then write down the original data of the Start value (entry) and change it to 0x4 (disabled).

Alternatively, you can try to remove just the filter driver from Safe Mode at least, by removing its entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal.

This is the relevant MS KB article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/816071

Obtaining a copy of the file

You can extract a copy from the Samsung Magician install folder. It's inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Samsung Magician\Rapid\Rapid_Upgrade.dll", if you open it with 7-Zip and browse within to \Rapid\Win8_amd64\RAPID\CacheFilter\amd64\SamsungRapidFSFltr.sys.

Unfortunately, it's encrypted... but, of course, the password is embedded within the main application. If you want it, run strings on RAPIDmode.dll and look at the suspiciously password-like string shortly after the string unzip.exe. It's a Unicode (probably UTF-16/UCS-2?) string -- I used Sysinternals Strings but --encoding=b or --encoding=l might work with GNU Strings.

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  • This helped me get a bit further - now I just get a dreaded "Inaccessible boot device" error that I will try and fiddle with.. I used chntpw from my Linux Mint install to modify the registry and that worked out great.
    – Frederik
    Oct 26, 2016 at 17:04
  • @Frederik I vaguely recall that some filter drivers are referenced elsewhere... maybe you need to remove those references too. Can't dig that up right now, need sleep. Search for something like "upper and lower filter drivers" but that might've been CD only. Did system restore not work? Can you try extracting a working copy of the driver?
    – Bob
    Oct 26, 2016 at 17:20
  • The system restore reverted the changes I made to the registry and I really don't fell like spending a lot more time on this so I'll probably just go ahead and reinstall Windows 10.. I have been thinking about doing that for a while anyways :) I got a copy of the file from a friend but that did not work either.
    – Frederik
    Oct 26, 2016 at 20:46
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In Samsung Magician version 7.1.1.820 inside the Rapid_Upgrade.dll one can find a ZIPFILE resource with the RAPID filter drivers:

  • SamsungRapidDiskFltr.sys
  • SamsungRapidFSFltr.sys

The zip file password is samsungsri@123 and can be found as a string in BRAPID.dll:

  • strings.exe BRAPID.dll > strings.txt
  • then search for unzip in the file and the password is the next string

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