BCD Corruption (BSOD related)

BCD Corruption 0xc000001 and 0xc00000e9

I have a PC Im working on that can't boot.

PC was originally Vista that has Windows 8.1 on it. Its an older Pavillion laptop. Problem seems to have started after an update. He called Microsoft and HP, Microsoft lead him to Refreshing his PC but apparently there was an external hard drive that was connected to the PC at the time and apparently refresh stopped in the middle. Upon restarting, the PC would post but once it tried to boot to Windows, I get a 0xc000001 error or there is an endless black screen.

Trying to boot to cdrom wouldn't work, throwing up 0xc00000e9 after giving me the windows loading screen.

I removed the battery, removed the hard drive.. put them back in.. reset BIOS to default settings.. This allowed me to boot into the recovery disk.

From here I tried to fix BCD files following the directions below:
Your PC Couldn't Start Properly (0xc000001) - Microsoft Community

However, at Bootrec /rebuildbcd I get the error, "The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable"

When I tried BCDBoot C:\Windows /s C: as suggested somewhere else which gives the error "Failure when attempting to copy boot files"

Marked partition as active.. System Restore gives me error "Please choose a an operating system and restart the computer"

While I had the HD removed, I plugged it into my PC and all his files are there intact.

Is there an easy way to fix the boot files? Im no expert in these types of issues so Im kinda stuck. Would it be easier to pull the files off my recovery disc and replace them while I have his HD hooked up to my PC?

I haven't attempted to refresh again.. In my head I don't think it would work as the system wouldn't find the boot files to initiate it anyway, right or wrong?

Any help is much appreciated!

Try suggestions from error-0xc00000e9-encountered-in-windows-81-windows | Microsoft Community

Gator no expert but what you are saying id it is asking for an operating system to boot from so forgive my curiosity but is this a dual boot machine??

Never a fan of either Vista or 8 but is this an upgrade too? as I am also not a fan of that option.

If the install was a clean install why not back all the data the person needs to a drive and then clean install the the machine - maybe the dive needs replacing too.??

ICit2lol said:

Gator no expert but what you are saying id it is asking for an operating system to boot from so forgive my curiosity but is this a dual boot machine??

Never a fan of either Vista or 8 but is this an upgrade too? as I am also not a fan of that option.

If the install was a clean install why not back all the data the person needs to a drive and then clean install the the machine - maybe the dive needs replacing too.??

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply John. I think the problem with System Restore and the "Select Operating System" error I got had something to do with him/Microsoft trying to perform a Refresh while an external HD was plugged in. According to him, the Refresh failed and he no longer had access to Recovery options. After the refresh failed, the PC would boot to a BSOD (0xc000001) or an endless black screen.

Trying to boot from Win 8.1 disc resulted in a 0xc00000e9 BSOD until I loaded BIOS defaults. After setting BIOS to default, I could boot into Win 8.1 recovery options from the disc.

After all this, the hard drive seemed to have completely crashed. Now I no longer see partitions in Diskpart. Its unrecognized when I plug it back into my PC (before This PC found it fine). In Disk Management the disk acts as if it is an unformatted disk...

My client has a backup so I think we are just going for a new laptop. However, I still want to get to the bottom of this for learning purposes.

Yes it always handy for future refs as you say.

Have just bought a new laptop myself and soon this old girl will have it's SSD cloned and 10 put on the clone like I did with one of my desktops but it is going to be an interesting exercise seeing it is a fairly different setup eh because I am still working on that desktop