Windows 10: HP Laptop won't boot - "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE"

Hey all,

Having a crazy situation with a laptop I offered to clean for somebody. It's an HP laptop and all I was doing was removing some of the HP bloatware that came on it from the factory, and installing some old HP software for an HP printer they no longer have anymore. One of the uninstalls required a restart, so I restarted the machine, but it will no longer boot! :S

Upon attempting to boot, I'll get the Win10 logo and after a moment, the spinning circle pauses for a second and I get a blue screen with a stop code stating "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE." All I had literally done was uninstall some of that HP software that came on the machine (I've cleaned bloatware off other laptops like this dozens of times before!).....what the heck caused this?

Upon restart from this "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" screen, I will get a 'Recovery' screen immediately after POST saying "Your PC couldn't start properly - A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed. - Error 0xc000000f - You'll need to use recovery tools"..........but the recovery tools in the form of Startup Repair and System Restore won't work....

I created a Win10 Installer/Recovery USB Key and can boot with that. I've tried the 'bootrec.exe /fixmbr' and 'bootrec.exe /fixboot' commands, both to no avail. System Restore doesn't help as they never had it turned on, so there are no Restore Points to use. Startup Repair fails and says it was unable to repair anything.

I'm a bit desparate...what options do I have left? ANY help is appreciated as I am stumped as to what to do next and about what is going on...

Thanks so much!!!

:)

 

Bluescreen when running “Reset this PC”: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

I have an ASUS G75VW and have this same problem continual loop of the "Inaccessible Boot Device ". But now my laptop won't even boot into bios. Can't get F2 or F8 or anything to work. Laptop now starts up with black screen and then shuts itself down after
about 30 seconds.

 

Windows 10 Install Stuck on Blue Screen/Spinning Dots

My computer went through the reset but didn't complete, having the message" INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE"

 

Hopefully you created the Windows 10 USB flash drive on an 8GB flash drive or larger. If you did, go to the \Sources folder on it and rename boot.wim to boot.bak.

Download Kyhi's Recovery Tools (Win14393PESE_x64 ISO v170116):
Win14393PESE_x64 ISO v170116

Mount the ISO file for recovery tools, and copy the boot.wim file from the mounted \Sources folder to the \Sources folder on the USB flash drive.

Boot the computer from it into Kyhi's Recovery Tools. Run Macrium Reflect. Under the restore menu is a utility to Fix Windows startup problems. Run that utility.

 

Hey Navy - this is a 64-bit machine, but it's running a 32-bit version of Win10...does it matter that the Kyhi ISO you refer to is 64-bit?

 

Yes, should probably use the 32-bit version then.

 

Will do - will get back to you in a few minutes.

 

OK - ran it, I let it go with the defaults (there was a screen that listed partitions and had automatically checked one called System off?) - it went through a little list and stopped at BCD something with a red X next to it, then asked me to restart. I restarted it and tried to boot from the hard drive again and immediately still got the recovery error....same thing, but this time saying something about not being able to find a necessary file (winload.exe) ?

Was the SYSTEM E: partition the one I should have let Macrium auto-select, it should I have selected a different one?

 

You can try it again with letting just letting Macrium Reflect do what it wants to. A screen shot of disk management would also help:

Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of

Please make sure to widen the columns so we can see all the data.

 

I DID just left Macrium do what it wanted to do. I was worried it didn't work because I didn't select something I should have. My other issue you can't help with is that this stupid laptop has an incredibly worn power plug so I can't even get it to run on A/C or charge right now....so I am also running out of time in the sense the battery will eventually run out unless I can get the stupid thing to charge (not that you can help with that), just very frustrated and need to vent...

 

Disk Management pic from the offending laptop:





Macrium had selected E: by default - was that the right one? E: is the partition with the Windows directory and all their files. C: is where the boot manager is, I think?

 

E: should be the Windows installation that you want to boot, C: should be the partition that contains the boot files that it boots from. If you get the computer to actually boot from the hard drive into Windows, all the drive letters will straighten themselves out.

 

Tried Macrium's boot restore by setting the 'active partition' to E AND C, it didn't work either time....still just brings up a Recovery screen immediately after POST saying the same as above? *Sad

Every time I try the Restore function in Macrium, I do notice that the 'BCD Store' creation portion of the checklist fails (red x)?

 

Under the All Programs menu in Kyhi's Recovery Tools, under BCD utilities (or maybe boot utilities) is a program called EasyBCD. You can try to use that to recreate the boot files from scratch onto the first partition (300mb) on the drive. If that doesn't work, looks like time to backup data and start over from scratch.

 

OK, tried EasyBCD....there was a "Re-create/Repair Boot Files" option that I tried in it, and it ran within a few seconds and said successful. Upon restart, I get the same 'INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE' error after watching the Windows logo and the dot circle spin several times....upon the auto restart from that, I get the 'Recovery' screen still. *sigh*

There is another option in EasyBCD labelled "Reset BCD Configuration" - should I try that...?