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

September 24, 2020 Windows 10 Windows Server 2016

How to Repair EFI/GPT Bootloader on Windows 10?

In this article we will learn how to repair Windows bootloader on a modern computer that uses UEFI instead of 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), incorrect actions during Windows recovery, removal of some data on hidden partitions, malicious software (virus, ransomware, etc.) and for some other reasons.

This article provides a step-by-step guide for recovering a damaged or deleted bootloader on Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 on computers running in native (non-legacy) UEFI mode. The guide should help if Windows doesn’t boot due to missing or damaged boot configuration file \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD.

Contents:

The boot configuration data for your PC is missing: EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Automatic Windows Bootloader Recovery
Using BCDBoot to Manually Repair EFI Bootloader in Windows 10

The boot configuration data for your PC is missing: EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD

A computer with Windows 10 installed in native UEFI mode will fail to boot if the EFI bootloader is corrupted. When trying to boot the computer, the following BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) error appears:

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 the bcdedit tool, you will receive an error like this:

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

The fact is that if Windows 10 is installed in native UEFI mode on a GPT disk, then the Windows 10 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 the computer boots with a black screen with the message “Operating System not found”, most likely the Windows bootloader is completely removed. Follow the instructions on the link.

Automatic Windows Bootloader Recovery

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

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

Using BCDBoot to Manually Repair EFI Bootloader in Windows 10

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

To repair the bootloader configuration (BCD), you have to boot from the original installation Windows 10 media (or a recovery disk or a special UEFI bootable USB flash drive). After booting into the recovery environment, you need to open a command line: select System Restore – > Troubleshoot-> Command Prompt).

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

In the command prompt that opens, run the disk management tool by typing the command:
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 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 disk has an asterisk (*) in the Gpt column, then the GPT partition table is used, 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 instruction 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, not on an 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 MBR (Master Boot Record) disk.

Select the disk with Windows installed (if there is one hard disk in the system, its index should be 0):
sel disk 0
Display the list of partitions and volumes on the disk:
list partition list volume

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). The main partition with the installed Windows with the NTFS file system (it can be both Windows 10 and Windows 8.1) is volume 2. There must also be an MSR (Microsoft System Reserved) partition of 16 MB for Windows 10 (or 128 MB for 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 1
assign letter K:
A message that the drive letter has been successfully 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 (recovering MBR record for a GPT disk looks strange)

All of these commands are applicable only for disks with MBR. If your computer boots in UEFI mode, then it necessarily uses the GPT partition table (as in our case). Therefore, when you run bootrec commands, you will see an error: access is denied

To fix boot records on an EFI partition, you need to use the BCDBoot tool. The BCDBoot tools allows you to restore bootloader files on the system 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.exe utility, you need to recreate the BCD store by copying the UEFI boot environment files to the boot partition from the Windows directory:
bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s k: /f ALL

C:\Windows – is the path to the directory with Windows 10 installed;
/f ALL – means that you want to copy the Windows Boot Environment files, including those for UEFI and BIOS computers (potential ability to boot in UEFI and BIOS systems). To copy only the EFI bootloader, use the /f UEFI command;
/l en-us — is a type of the system locale. By default, en-us – English (USA) is used;
/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, the command will be different. For example, in the Windows version for the UK, use the following command
bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-uk /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

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 2 (partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2).

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 specify the correct local language code. The bcdboot tool copies the BCD template files from the \Windows\System32\Config directory. If the BCD templates 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 – drive D :): sfc /scanow /OFFBOOTDIR=C:\ /OFFWINDIR=D:\WINDOWS
BFSVC Error: Error copying boot files from Last Error = 0x570 – try to check drive with the help of command: CHKDSK K: /F
BFSVC Error: Failed to set element application device. Status = [c000000bb] – check the EFI and Windows 10 partitions with chkdsk.exe. Verify that the hidden and system attribute of the BCD file is cleared. Remove it:
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).

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

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146 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: http://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 […]

Mick November 9, 2014 - 5:16 pm

Thanks. It helped me well!

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.

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

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: http://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 ?

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!

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