Windows 10: Can't boot system from SSD - can't find winload.efi file

Hello!


I wanted to upgrade my Sony VAIO with Windows 10 from the original 750 Gb HDD to a new 1 Tb SSD (SanDisk Ultra). I downloaded Macrium Reflect to clone my HDD to the SSD and after doing the cloning, I installed the SSD in my computer and turned it on, but the system doesn't boot. It shows a blue screen with the error 0xc000000e and says that the file winload.efi is missing or corrupted. When that happened I swapped the disks and did the cloning again. When it finished, I verified that both the SSD and my \C: have the same winload.efi file (both with the same modified date and in the same location), swapped the disks again and rebooted the laptop, but again the blue screen with the error and the winload.efi file missing notice.


I've been doing some research on the internet to solve the issue and some people say to disable secure boot in UEFI and reboot. Others use a USB flash drive with a windows 10 that I have no idea where they take from and write some commands (I don't remember all the steps) to make it boot. Honestly I don't know what to do. Normally I feel pretty comfortable with computers but now I'm a bit scared of doing something wrong and losing my OS.


Anyone had this issue and was able to solve it? how?

If you need any other info I'll provide


Thank you!!

Bye, Mercedes

:)

 

Which tool to recover the EFI partition? Booted into Rescue Disk

That's not what they suggest here:

FIX: Steps to Fix Winload.EFI Error - Appuals.com

Winload.EFI Error, is pretty much self explanatory by it’s name is an error that prevents windows from loading. This is usually caused by corrupt boot records or incorrect boot configuration. Depending on your Operating System, the error message may vary but the keyword winload.efi will be same. On a Windows 8/8.1/10 system, the error usually pops-up in the following form.

 

UEFI boot options disappeared from BIOS; now getting reboot and select proper boot device

In short, I need to get the system/BIOS to allow UEFI booting of the SSD.

Computer started up today with default BIOS settings.

• Only SSD 1(Windows boot) and SSD 2 were listed in BIOS; HDD 1 and HDD 2 were not visible
• System would not boot. Gave the 'reboot and select proper boot device' message
• Boot menu has no UEFI/EFI (or Windows Boot Manager) entries anymore

I went into Partition Magic/Gparted and confirmed :

• All drives are still showing
• All drives' data is in tact [EFI volume/partition is still listed (and can be browsed/files accessible)]

Gparted print out (note dev/sda2 apparently that is normal behavior) :

/dev/sda1 (locked) EFI System Partition--Fat32--/media/sda1--100.00mb--46.81MiB--53.19MiB--boot,esp
/dev/sda2 (exclamation mark) Microsoft reserved partition--unknown file system--no mount point--128.00MiB--unused spaced--msftres
/dev/sda3 basic data partition--ntfs--/media/sda3--118.58GiB--70.78GiB--47.80GiB--msftdata
/dev/sda4--ntfs--/media/sda4--450.00MiB--327.71MiB--122.29MiB--hidden,diag



As I am able to boot Windows installation from USB, I tried the standard startup repair. It said it was not able to fix any problems.

Next I tried to repair the EFI with Diskpart in the shell:

• sel vol 1 (note that Diskpart states EFI partition is 'hidden')
• assign letter=z:
• cd /d z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\
• bootrec /fixboot
• bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-us /s vz /f ALL

It completed all tasks successfully. Unfortunately that did not work.

Other things I have tried :

• Removing CMOS battery and replacing with a new one - my HDD started showing up again after doing this.
• Using the old MBR commands(in hopes it would force the Windows startup repair to recognize and fix a problem)

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd​

• Loaded BIOS 'optimized'/defaults (the system did this already once before, hence why I am in this situation, though doing it manually seemed like an option worth trying. Note that after doing this and restarting the system, HDD's stopped showing again)
• Removed new CMOS battery and left it out of the system for thirty minutes
• Formatted EFI and msftres partitions, then rebuilt the EFI boot records

In summary, am looking to force the BIOS to see the EFI partition on the SSD boot drive, as it is not an option any longer.

 

upgrading to SSD and unable to boot into Windows10 (EFI hidden)

Hi,

I am unable to boot into windows 10 after completing the installation successfully. PC is HP Prodesk G3 small form factor (business PC)

All files are being written to the SSD but just can not boot. The disk is GPT and secure boot is enabled. I am unable to find an option for AHCI in bios so hope its set correctly.

Startup repair returns (couldnt repair your PC) > C:\windows\system32\logfiles\srttrail.txt

Disk Part shows a 100MB volume listed as FAT32 which is the EFI volume and I am guessing that becasue this volume is hidden the PC is unable to use boot manager? When attemptimg to boot afer install it does list UEFI: Windows Boot Manager , but only a black
screen after.

Would really appreciate assistance in sorting this as I am trying to upgrade.