Question BSOD on a fresh new system

[JCE]

I'm going to give my specs and some background first before I get in to the problem so you all will be informed.

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K Coffee Lake 8-Core 3.6 GHz (4.9 GHz Turbo) (NOT OC'd)
MOBO: MSI B360 GAMING PLUS LGA 1151 (300 Series)
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB FTW GAMING ACX 3.0, 6GB
PSU: Seasonic Prime Ultra Gold 650w
Case: Cooler Master HAF XB EVO
OS HDD: SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC SSD
2nd HDD: Seagate Barracuda HDD ST3000DM001 3TB (drive with Steam, games, music, video and etc)
3rd HDD: Seagate Barracuda HDD ST4000DM004 4TB (backup drive only)
Monitor: Samsung 46" LED HDTV

I created a Windows 10 install straight from a Microsoft Windows 10 installation tool and was able to format the SSD and install Windows 10 without any issues. The system in fact worked perfectly and was pretty fast and quiet so I was happy. I only installed the below programs and usually I will only install programs as I need them.

CPU-Z
GPU-Z
Office 2016
AVG Antivirus
Steam+my gaming library (on HDD #2)
Google Chrome & Comodo Dragon browsers


That's it. Like I said, it ran perfect for about 3 days on all brand new hardware minus the hard drives and graphics card. So normally what I do is once I determine the CPU won't overheat after running it under a high load I set my power settings to never turn off or sleep/hibernate the computer so it is always on--which I always do. In fact it has been sitting in BIOS for a couple hours now never going above 36ºC (room is hot) so I don't believe it overheated--not that this would of mattered me thinks. So Wednesday night when I came up stairs after work to use it the power was off. And after turning it on I was greeted with this BSOD message below (I cannot upload images?) that just loops. Nothing I do gets me past this BSOD other than going in to BIOS...which means I cannot dump any logs.

Your PC/Device needs to be repaired

The header checksum for this file doesn't match the computed checksum.

File: \windows\system32\boot\winload.efi
Error code: 0xc0000221

I also only get these options at the bottom:
Press Enter to try again (doesn't do anything)
Press F8 for Startup Settings (doesn't do anything but restart the system as noted below)
Press Esc for UEFI Firmware Settings

I spent the next 6 hours researching online what could be the problem and trying out the recommended fixes. I took out my SSD and downloaded a program to check the health and it was 100% in good health so that wasn't the problem. I tried moving around the boot order, I went and verified all of the BIOS settings people were saying and I even unplugged every peripheral and nothing will get me past this BSOD. When I try to go to "Start up settings" the computer shuts off, waits like 3 seconds and comes back on straight to this same BSOD. I tried to get the Windows 10 install USB to boot up and that didn't work, with even re-running the Install tool to create another USB to try. I unplugged every other hard drive connected and just left the OS SSD connected and same result. I have secure boot off and fast boot off as well.

At this point I have no earthly idea what to do and all I want to do is either fix the problem or start over and reinstall Windows 10. I've literally never had this kind of trouble before that I couldn't solve in the ~30 years I've been using and tinkering/building computers. My previous Windows 7 machine that I'm using right now to post this runs flawlessly, I only am using Windows 10 on this new machine because Microsoft/Intel pretty much forces every mobo manufacturer to stop letting Windows 7 be installed due to lack of USB 2.0 legacy support or there are no Windows 7 motherboard drivers--but I sucked it up and bought it all and installed Windows 10 anyway. So now I'm stuck with a brick now I cannot use with this computer. I'm frustrated beyond belief, I'm honestly at my end where I take the restocking fee hit and return all of this stuff and never upgrade or buy new computer components again if someone cannot help me fix this problem. Oh, and my wife isn't happy either so I've got to deal with that too. Yea, I'm having a bad day. :-/ Thank you in advance for any help, I truly mean it.

 

[Colif]

Images would need to be uploaded to an image sharing webiste and links shown here.

when you installed win 10 the first time, was ssd only drive in PC? reason I ask is windows has a habit of putting the boot partition on any blank space it finds on other drives, so its possible the boot sector isn't on the ssd and its one of the other 2 hdd that is actually holding the partition the winload.efi file should be in.

Downlaod seatools bootable and check the 2 hdd- https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/

you shouldn't be getting BCD errors on a brand new install.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I spent the next 6 hours researching online what could be the problem and trying out the recommended fixes.

Did you check these solutions?

http://woshub.com/windows-8-winload-efi-is-missing-or-damaged/

 

[JCE]

Thank you for the replies.

Images would need to be uploaded to an image sharing webiste and links shown here.

Ah ok, thanks for letting me know.

when you installed win 10 the first time, was ssd only drive in PC? reason I ask is windows has a habit of putting the boot partition on any blank space it finds on other drives, so its possible the boot sector isn't on the ssd and its one of the other 2 hdd that is actually holding the partition the winload.efi file should be in.

Downlaod seatools bootable and check the 2 hdd- https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/

you shouldn't be getting BCD errors on a brand new install.

There were other drives installed in the PC, the ones I had listed above in my original post. Well if that what you describe is what happened then I'll need to start over anyway because I deleted all partitions on all those other drives and reformatted them to rule them out as a possible problem after I booted my system up with each hard drive one by one before I did this and only the original Win10 OS SSD came up with that BSOD. So if the winload.efi was on another hard drive its long gone by now. LOL Oh well, I just hope this doesn't happen again. I just cannot afford this sort of downtime as I also work from home and need this computer up and running 24/7 as I'm on call.

Did you check these solutions?

http://woshub.com/windows-8-winload-efi-is-missing-or-damaged/

Yes, including that very site/page. None of those worked. I'm just going to suck it up and delete everything on that OS SSD and start over.

This topic can be locked. Thanks anyway guys. Have a great evening.

 

[JCE]

Images would need to be uploaded to an image sharing webiste and links shown here.

Ah ok thanks for letting me know.

when you installed win 10 the first time, was ssd only drive in PC? reason I ask is windows has a habit of putting the boot partition on any blank space it finds on other drives, so its possible the boot sector isn't on the ssd and its one of the other 2 hdd that is actually holding the partition the winload.efi file should be in.

Downlaod seatools bootable and check the 2 hdd- https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/

you shouldn't be getting BCD errors on a brand new install.

I had all of the drives in my original post installed when I did my windows 10 install. If the efi was on one of the other hard drives then it is lone gone by now because I deleted all partitions and reformatted all of the other hard drives to rule them out as issues.

So I'll just do the same with the problem windows 10 SSD and start over, I just hope this is not my future with this OS because I work from home and have to have a fully working computer being on-call 24/7. I quite literally cannot afford downtime with this sort of problem. It is frustrating because I never had any issues with Windows 7, quite literally zero.

Did you check these solutions?

http://woshub.com/windows-8-winload-efi-is-missing-or-damaged/

Yes, including that very page. Nothing worked. I'm giving up trying to save this install, I got to work tomorrow and need this system up again.

This topic can be locked, closed, deleted, whatever. Like I said I'm just going to delete everything and start over. Thanks anyway guys. Have a good evening!