Windows 10: BSOD CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED w/error 0xc000000e on reboot

OK, the recovery partition on Valiant has been deleted; now it shows as unallocated space in Disk Management. Windows still throws 0xc000000e if I boot without Valiant connected.

 

Do you have this hive that you loaded in the registry?

 

Yes, it should still be on Valiant.

 

Could you upload this hive in onedrive or google drive and post a share link.

 

The hive in question was the SYSTEM tree. Here is a link to the file on OneDrive.

Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.

In particular, I wanted to dump the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Forms entries so I can import these into the live system. I attached the hive, exported the entries, edited the file, imported the entries, checked them, then detached the hive. Haven't been able to disconnect that Valiant drive ever since.

 

Hi PhabGuy.

Disconnect all the disks and storage units other than that one containing the C drive. It should be one of the 250 GB Seagates.

Make it sure that the 450 MB partition is marked as active there. If already not, mark it as active.
As the computer will cease to boot at this point, Method 3 will be very useful (and for the last part of my post, too)

Now, with the only one disk connected, run Startup Repair; for three times, with restarts in between every single run.
It may take a time, dont worry if it takes long.
Hopefully it will be bootable after the end of the process. (If not, we have to do some further steps, so please let us know).

Now boot to the BIOS with that single disk attached. Make it the first boot device.

Now attach the other disks back. Unmark (set inactive) all the active partitions from all the other disks. Let the computer have only one active partition; that is on the disk containing the C drive. It will prevent the future possibilities of the same issue.

Let us know your results.

 

Well, it's not good. After disconnecting all but C, I tried the "hard power-off" method to invoke a Startup Repair. But of course, the machine blue-screens before getting that far. So I attached Valiant to at least get past the blue-screen to force off the power. Unfortunately, on the 3rd try, I inadvertently powered it off simultaneously as I noticed Windows saying it was "preparing to repair".

So, then I tried booting from a Win10 install disk to do a Startup Repair. But Startup Repair fails to fix the problem.

If I boot to the hard drive now, the machine believes it is booting Windows 7, and shows me a "Choose an operating system" menu with "Windows 7" and "(recovered)". If I press Enter to select Windows 7, it throws a 0c000000f (or oc000000e if Valiant is not attached) error saying a required device is inaccessible.

It seems evident that something important got deleted or corrupted due to my hard-power-off, and the system is rather nicely borked.

Any thoughts while I sleep on the prospect of doing another clean install of Win10?

 

We need to see the partitions and parameters. Thrice.

• Of the HDD having the C drive only,
• With all the 4 HDDs (3 250 GB and 1 1TB) connected; and
• with the said external HDD in question connected.

Apparently, at least two of your HDDs have good indications of a OS installed on it, and the 1 TB one (which should not be the C drive) is the first disk in the stack. The bootloader is nicely messed up there.

Do you have access to another computer right now? If so, download Partition wizard Bootable CD (the last one in the link). Burn it in a blank CD or in a USB flash stick.

Boot into Partition Wizards GUI following this instructions. When you are on the last screen, take a camera snap of the screen and upload the snap here.
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Ten Forums

We need to see the partitions and parameters at this point.

 

Well, Arc, many thanks for shining some light in this dark cavern. As a result of examining these drives one by one, it would appear that I have been booting off the external 250 GB drive all along! Of course the system won't boot with that drive disconnected. D'oh! The external 250 GB drive is NOT Valiant, it actually has no label and by exploring it's contents with Partition Wizard, I can see that it has been my C: drive. The Valiant (V*Smile drive is my first internal drive. How these got switched around, I cannot explain. But of course, I want to be booting off the internal 2560 GB drive and I want the external 250 GB drive to be Valiant that I can disconnect.

I can't figure out how to make Partition Wizard (the free bootable version 9.1) show multiple drives, so I have taken screenshots of each drive connected individually. The first screenshot represents what I thought was my C: drive (internal drive), but it turns out it is Valiant. The last screenshot is the external drive I thought was Valiant, but it is the unlabelled C: drive that I have been booting off all this time. Now it won't boot. The error message is:

I notice in Partition Wizard that the first 450 MB partitions has a status of "Active, Boot", whereas the 232 GB partition has a status of "System" but not "Boot". Could this be the reason this drive is not booting?

 

A very nice feedback! It has almost all the necessary information, but unfortunately it misses the key information. On which Disk windows is originally installed.

I marked one line of your original post in red, that means it. Whenever that drive is disconnected the issue occurs.

I think it is a TYPO because there are three 256 GB disks (Valiant, Zodiac, unlabelled) and two 1 TB disks (Utopia and Reliant).

A primary partition having flags "Active" and "Boot" can boot windows for another partition. So it is not the reason behind not booting.

Because it has the boot files, but not the OS installed. It is some other disk which originally have the OS installed.

And we need to know which one of the five disks have the OS installed originally.

We can Eliminate Utopia and Reliant.
BTW, please set Utopia as inactive.

The Disk marked as Valiant (internal) cannot contain any OS in it. It can host the Boot files, but the other partition is unallocated, 0 bytes used.

The disk zodiac can contain the OS, but it does not contain the boot records in it.

If you say that your OS is installed on a 256 GB Internal disk, it must be Zodiac; based on the explanation and camera snaps you supplied.

Before proceeding, Please let me be sure that we are going to take the right step. Let us use the partition explorer feature of Partition Wizard. Do it: How to Explore Partition | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial

The disk that is having the file structure like this one .... Attachment 87280.... is the disk containing the OS.

Please let us know .... Does Zodiac contain a similar file structure? If not, then which of the disks contain those files?

We can go for our final steps after knowing this information only.

 

Hi, Arc. I have attached screenshots showing the files.
#1 is the 250 GB external (which has been my boot drive),
#2 is the 250 GB internal (Valiant) and
#3 is the 250 GB internal (Zodiac).

#3, Zodiac (internal) is not my operating system drive. However the folder Defiant-C is my working backup of the "C" drive.

#2, Valiant (internal) is not my current operating system. It is a backup of the C: drive taken a few months ago before I did a reinstall of WIndows.

#1, Unlabeled external drive. I'm certain this contains my operating system. I have drilled down with the explorer to find files I placed on it only two days ago. I can only assume that it was plugged in when I did the reinstall of Windows a few months ago and mistakenly chose it for the installation.

Thanks for your help--I feel I'm getting closer to a solution.

 

So Valiant has the OS installed.Attachment 87361

But its partition structure is corrupt.Attachment 87362

And this corruption (unallocation and conversion to logical of the boot device) is an indication of a malware; a special type of bad malware called bootkit/rootkit.

Get Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Boot from it, update it and perform a full scan of your entire computer. If it finds infections, kill them all.

When done, disconnect all the disks, keep only Valiant connected. Boot back to Partition Wizard Boot CD. Format the 452.49 MB partition as NTFS, Primary. No drive letter will be preferred.
Next, Mark this 452.49 MB partition as Active.
Note that only a primary partition can be an active partition; and only an active partition can hold the boot flag.

Next, Rebuild MBR on that disk.

Now try to boot normally. Does it work? If not, run Startup Repair for three consecutive times, with restarts in between every single run.

Please follow these instructions exactly without violation a single part. Dont add back any other disk still it becomes bootable on itself.

Report us back with the results upto this step.

If it is now bootable, the job is not over. A good lot of housecleaning will still be remained.

 

Good morning Arc. Doing a Rebuild MBR makes a lot of sense.

But I'm unclear on which drive you want to rebuild. I think you're saying the internal drive labelled Valiant should be the one. However, the OS on Valiant is the one from several months ago--it is not the latest running OS and appears not to have been my "C:" drive (user profiles are old, etc.)

Regarding,

Is it possible this happened as a result of formatting/deleting the recovery partition on the Valiant drive? I was instructed to do that a week ago (if you dig back to page 3 of this thread)? Or possibly when I botched the Startup Repair yesterday by powering off in the middle of it? It was this latter event that rendered the system unbootable.

Admittedly, I'm no expert on how Windows decides where to find itself when booting, but it would be really good if Windows found itself on the unlabelled external drive which certainly has my latest "C:" drive files (user profile, etc.). Is the partition structure on the unlabelled external drive also corrupted?

If it is at all possible to get the unlabelled external drive to boot up, I could continue working this week. And since I now understand what the original problem was, I can take steps to clone the running OS from the external drive back to an internal drive using something like Partition Wizard. Would it be possible to do that?

Thanks.

EDIT: Going back to the original Disk Management dump (page 2 of this thread), I can see now the following:

C: (unlabelled), 232.00 GB --> external drive (originally thought to be Valiant)
- originally Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, System]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active & Boot]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, None]

V: (Valiant), 232.44 GB --> now known to be an internal drive
- original Healthy (Active, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active & Boot]
+ 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Logical, None] <- because we deleted it on page 3 of the thread.

Z: (Zodiac), 232.88 GB --> internal drive
- original Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) [Partition Wizard now shows as Primary, Active]

So if I understand correctly, the original boot order would be find boot loader on Z: (Zodiac) because it was marked "System", then load the OS found on unlabelled external drive because it was marked "Boot" (plus all the other flags).

Now, if I understand correctly, the boot order is find boot loader on unlabelled external drive first partition because it is now marked "System", the load the OS found either on unlabelled external drive second partition marked "Active & Boot" or on V: (Valiant) marked as "Active & Boot". I suspect it is not trying Valiant because, with all three drives connected, or with unlabelled and Zodiac only, the boot fails with the following:
Attachment 87438

Do you think it is possible to use Partition Wizard to patch this boot sequence back to something that gets me running again?

 

The Valiant disk is having the system partition of an irregularly increased size, totally wiped up and formatted as logical. Attachment 87435It can get this shape in two different ways only. Either you have done it deliberately or it is a bootkit infection. And I dont think that you have done it deliberately. None of the aforesaid actions can do it. So as far as I can see, it was a case of infection.

If you dont want this OS installed on Valiant, then better you format the entire HDD. No need to keep a disk with an unwanted OS installed.
Moreover, the formatting will remove the possibility of the existence of the bootkit in that very disk anymore.

Me too, specially after reading this post.

• You dont want any of the two 1TB disks to be your boot drive.
• You dont want the unlabelled extrnal HDD to continue as your Boot drive.
• You dont want Valiant to be your boot drive.

Then what remains there is Zodiac. But Zodiac does not have any OS installed on it. Attachment 87436So it will not be able to boot from itself.

Can you please be specific which one of the disks have the windows installation that you want to boot from? We need to perform out tasks on that disk.

That might be possible, but will add more trouble there.

As you are unsure how it all happened, as you are not sure which OS installation you want to boot up, the best way would be start afresh.

If you want to start afresh, then ......

• First choose a disk on which you want to install windows.
• Format both the other 256 GB disks, the internal one and the external one. Make it sure that none of them contain any Active partition. Set all their active partitions as inactive.
• Disconnect all the HDDs other than the chosen one. Perform a clean install of windows on it. As you have already upgraded to windows 10, the motherboard already got the digital entitlement; so activation would not be an issue.
• Add back the other drives.

If I have been in your place, I would have taken this way at this stage.

 

I apologize for this confusion and I can appreciate your frustration. Please look at the "EDIT:" I made to my last post above which crossed while you were writing. The recovery partition on Valiant was blown away by me as requested earlier by Axe0. However, even after doing that, the system still booted and ran (although it still had the original problem).

The unlabelled external drive does contain the OS I want. So my first objective would be to get that one to boot up. That would get me to a known, workable (but short-term) state. Then my second objective (later), would be to migrate that OS off the external drive to an internal drive.

Thanks so much.