Solved Recovery startup error 0xc000000f

[zakh508]

I recently got a 290x. When I installed it, my motherboard gave me an error code which I figured out need a bios update to fix. After flashing my bios, the graphics card worked! However, I now get an blue error screen reading:

Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired
A required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed.
Error code: 0xc000000f

If I follow “Press F8 for Startup Settings” at the bottom of that screen, the message changes to:

Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired
The application or operating system couldn’t be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \WINDOWS\system32\windload.exe
Error code: 0xc000000f

I found this thread

Which led me to Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery

Which didn't work either.

Running

bootrec /scanos

returns: Total identified Windows installations: 0
This thread looks promising, I'll try that next.

I have Hiren’s boot cd; I just don't know exactly what to try fixing. I don't know which MBR tool to use or how to use them. I don't even know if this is necessarily an MBR error.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: Just realized I had my storage config set to IDE. Changing it to AHCI did not fix the problem. Did that mess something up?

SOLUTION
I fixed it! Not sure exactly how, but heres what I did leading up to it being fixed. As I definitely was just doing things kind of desperately, I don't think you should follow every single step I did if you have the same problem. I would recommend following this order: Step 2 > Step 4 > Step. I think those are the ones that actually did something (5 wouldn't be necessary if I had done 4 before 3)

1. Ran startup repair three times from repair disk USB made on Windows 8.1

I restarted in between each repair, ignoring the message it gave me. (Pretty sure this step didn't do it, it would just fail right away without even attempting repairs every time, then tell me to try to restore which would just fail and go to a black screen.)​

2. Unplugged everything except SSD, mouse, keyboard, and monitor and power (duh)

This right here. This is what did it. I unplugged the sata cables to my hard drive and front panel IO, as well as my USB devices. When I restarted, I let it go to the first priority boot, which was the SSD P0 or something. It ended up being the recovery partition, but I just thought windows was automatically going to the recovery options so I...
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3. Ran startup repair three times from the recovery partition (I would do after step 4 if I did it again)

I think this is equivalent to using the recovery options on a windows install disk. It would say "attempting repairs" every time then "repairs failed." I still ran it three times. After the third, I went into bios and checked the boot order and...
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4. Set boot priority to "Windows Boot Manager"

I had set it to the SSD last time. Although I had tested windows boot manager as the startup option earlier so I definitely had to run the repairs or unplug before it worked. This only applies if you have a UEFI boot on GPT (according to this). When I did this, it loaded up the windows login screen but ran insanely slow (I couldn't type at first, then when I hit enter after my password it took forever to start trying to login, then it just hung on logging it) so I just restarted and...
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5. Ran startup repair again

Just the once this time.​

And that's what did it. Hope this helps someone if they stumble across it.
[h=1][/h]