EasyBCD system now unbootable

cressos

Member
Hi

I had dual boot Win7 and Win10 working well, was staying in Win7 but system crashed a few times and on last time it would not boot.

The laptop has 3 primary partitios and two logical:

P1- Boot
P2-Win7
P3 -Win10

P4 - Data
P5 - Page

I did not put the boot partition in, it came with it and has some recovery files there so I did not nuke it.

First off it was was not booting or even showing an error.

This is a weakness of EasyBCD, if anything goes wrong and you can't get back into Windows you are screwed.

So first thing I did was have a look at the disk, all partitions except boot were gone, so I got those back quite easily with a partiton tool.

Now it will at least show the boot menu which suggests it is getting as far as easyBCD but if I select either Win7 or Win10 it will not boot either.

I looked on your site for some sort of EasyBCD recovery disk that could at least diagnose what the system is expecting and finding.

I found the Easy Recovery disk and remembered a work colleague had that so I took system to him, he ran it , it saw the Win7 partiton and did the automatic recovery, but still it will not boot.

Error has changed in that it is now not finding EasyBCD boot file instead of Windows one.

The files are there as far as I can see, it seems to me it has just got confused about the partition numbers, in the old boot,ini days this would have been simple to fix now we have BCD no so much.

I tried making WIn7 active and boot, made no difference,,so rolled back to boot partition as active and boot.

Has anyone got any advice, there must be a simple utility that allows one to track the boot order and perhaps edit it OUTSIDE WINDOWS??
 
Hi Cressos,

I'm sorry you're having trouble booting your PC. First things first, it's necessary to understand EasyBCD's role in all of this. As soon as you exited EasyBCD after configuring your initial dual-boot between Windows 7 and Windows 10, EasyBCD's involvement in the boot process was completely ended. If you removed or uninstalled EasyBCD at that point, nothing would have changed about how your PC booted up. What you see when you start your PC (or don't see, as the case may be) is not the EasyBCD menu but rather the Windows Boot Manager, edited and organized by EasyBCD for your convenience.

Reading your post, it does not seem that EasyBCD was used/involved afterwards and something else must have happened to your PC that wiped out your disks - I suspect a bootsector virus. Can you follow the instructions at Fixing the Windows Bootloader via the setup DVD and report how far along you get?
 
EasyBCD is not a boot manager, and is not taking any active part in booting your system.
The boot menu, the BCD and the bootmgr module are all pure MS.
EasyBCD is just a tool to help you manage the contents of the BCD without needing to know and use the command-line syntax utility bcdedit which is all that MS provides for that purpose.
The EasyRE recovery disk and the MS installation DVD can fix a broken boot process but only the latter can fix a system which is fundamentally borked.
The whole process is as follows

1.After pressing the power button, the PC’s firmware initiates a Power-On Self Test (POST) and loads firmware settings. This pre-boot process ends when a valid system disk is detected.
2.Firmware reads the master boot record (MBR), and then starts Bootmgr.exe. Bootmgr.exe finds and starts the Windows loader (Winload.exe) on the Windows boot partition.
3.Essential drivers required to start the Windows kernel are loaded and the kernel starts to run, loading into memory the system registry hive and additional drivers that are marked as BOOT_START.
4.The kernel passes control to the session manager process (Smss.exe) which initializes the system session, and loads and starts the devices and drivers that are not marked BOOT_START.
5.Winlogon.exe starts, the user logon screen appears, the service control manager starts services, and any Group Policy scripts are run. When the user logs in, Windows creates a session for that user.
6.Explorer.exe starts, the system creates the desktop window manager (DWM) process, which initializes the desktop and displays it.

Anything you did in the past with EasyBCD is accessed and actioned in step 2.
If you are seeing anything happening beyond the display of the boot menu and your selection of an option, then EasyBCD did its job and can have no influence from there on.
Sometimes a system becomes so corrupted, possibly by a failing HDD (or portion thereof) that it's just not fixable short of a complete OS reinstallation or even a new HDD.

You should be able to find a HDD analysis and diagnostic utility on the website of the manufacturer of your HDD which you can run against the disk which suffered the multiple crashes, and see whether it suggests a major problem.
 
Hi mahmoud,
sorry to jump in.
Seems we both replied simultaneously, but you are the faster typist.
 
Thank you Terry and Mamoud for your detailed replies and for clarifying what EasyBCD does.

Whilst waiting for a reply I saw this page

0xc0000098 – Fix for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8

and as nothing automated would work I used this command

bootrec /rebuildbcd

It found the OS's and said it rebuilt it but still it would not boot

I think it is because this system boots on P1 and the OS's are on P2 and P3, I did try making them Active but no joy.

So I followed your page above and ran these commands

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

They did the trick

What would be great is a read only CMD utility that draws out your config and in text maps out the config

So

Systems partions found
P1 - Active
P2 - System (Win7)
P3 - System (Win10)

Mapping Boot process......

P1 Active, MBR found (Win7)

Bootmgr points to P1, No Windows folder found

Your system is trying to load windows from a partition without the appropriate files

So it would just take you as far as an error, then perhaps suggest commands to fix it

Recommended action:

from CMD prompt via Windows Repair disk run the following commands:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

The problem with these types of situation is that you are working blind

I have scanned for viruses and rootkits, nothing found, I think it just kept overheating and dies at a critical point.

Anyway thanls for your help, good to know BCD is not to blame, now I have to go tackle damn UEFI on a new desktop, who the hell invented that, a sadist I am sure!
 
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