Question Windows 10 won't boot after boot from USB

Apr 25, 2022
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I booted a friends HDD via usb after her laptop died so she recover files. It did something to HHD in my laptop now windows won't boot.

My drive is fully functional but the bios can't find my OS. The PXE exits with E61. There is nothing wrong with the hardware all diagnostics pass.

Does anybody know how I can get it boot again?
 
Apr 25, 2022
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I'm not using PXE that's what appears on the boot screen.

I was booting normally from the internal drive. I had booted my friends drive from USB before and it got all the way to the login screen. When I shut it down and removed the usb connection my OS booted without a problem. The next time I did it my friend took the files she wanted of her old drive. After that my drive wouldn't boot.
 
Apr 25, 2022
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It just loops back to the same screen.

However, I have made some progress. The active flag had gone off the system partition. I have reset it and am now back to the BSOD. Auto repair is unsuccessful. I have ran BOOTREC /FINDOS, it doesn't find my installation. I don't know what it's looking for, but the windows partition is there and I can read it.
 
Apr 25, 2022
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This laptop was running perfectly well until I booted my friend's drive.
It is using legacy boot.

I found a Microsoft support thread on how to recreate BCD I will try that this evening.

The os is there but boot sector/files, don't which yet got messed up somehow when the other os was running.
 
Apr 25, 2022
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Hi,

Not at home. BSOD message is "bad config data" or words to that effect. Will check later and post image.

Sata settings I don't know about but will check. Could booting from a different drive change bios settings? I wouldn't have thought so.

Anyway my drive is SSD other is spinning metal.
 
BSOD message is "bad config data" or words to that effect. Will check later and post image.
Still not making any progress. None of the tools e.g. bootrec , bcdedit etc can find the OS.
Show screenshots with BSOD error.
BSOD BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_DATA -means corrupted bootloader.

From recovery environment execute:
diskpart​
list disk​
select disk 0​
list partition​
list volume​
Show screenshot with result.
 
most likely when you booted the laptop with a usb thumb device the storage controller assigned new drive letters to each of the partitions and it did it incorrectly. This is very common if the laptop has the intel storage controller.

you will have to boot the laptop again with a usb thumb device, go to safe mode repair and run the diskpart tool
then list out all of the drive assignments and correctly reassign the drive letters.
most likely intel control assigned the small reserved partition as drive c: when it should not have a drive letter.

command would look something like this:
diskpart.exe
list disk
select disk 0
list volume
select volume 0
assign letter=c:
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the key part is list volume which will show the partitions there sizes and drive assignments.
find letter c and see where it is assigned it need to be assigned to the large windows partition that is in gigabytes. not any small partition that is in MB.

often with this problem you will find c assigned to a small partition. you will have to remove the assignment or set it to a letter other than c to free up drive letter c to be assigned to the correct drive location.

so select the volume that is incorrectly assigned to c
assign it a new letter
assign letter=g (this will free c to be reused)
then select the volume you want to be c
then run
assign letter=c
list volume (to check that it is ok)
exit (to close the app)
remove the usb thumb drive and reboot.

later I would go into windows control panel and remove the intel rapid storage driver and install the generic microsoft version so I would not ever have this problem again on that machine.
remove command in diskpart can remove a drive letter but I just assign it a letter other than c: so intel drive does not do the same error again. microsoft does not assign drive letters to these small hidden or the small partition for security reasons.
intel driver does when it sees a boot with a primary active partition. It just picks and half the time it picks the wrong one.
very common problem
 
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you are simply incorrect.
There's no trolling from me.
Your information is just terribly misguided.
i understand how it should work and it does work that way when you use the microsoft generic version of the storage controller. that version does not decide to reorder and assign drive letters to the reserve partitions. The stupid intel version does. When you look at these system you will see the reserved partition getting assigned drive c: and the main partition getting assigned drive d: and the system will not boot until you fix it or wipe and reinstall without knowing the cause. I have fixed this on many machines and it just happens over and over until you remove the intel driver and use the generic driver from microsoft.

also, note that your statement about the repair environment is also correct but does not pertain to the cause of the problem. The laptop boot of the intel driver has to detect the thumb drive and that instance of the controller reassigns the drive letters and saves it. (not in the repair environment)
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edit: generally for this to happen, the person doing the repair makes a mistake.
what they should do is:
power down the laptop, boot into bios, make the boot up order change, insert the USB thumb drive, then boot up the repair environment.

what they actually do is: insert the thumb drive, power down the machine, make the boot changes then boot the repair environment. power down, remove the thumb drive, then reboot and the drives have been reassigned.

too easy of a mistake to make.
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edit: thinking about this fix, you might be correct I might have used the local diskpart command from the local repair environment on the laptop( comes up after 3 boot failures). So my instructions would be bad to use a thumb drive.
 
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Apr 25, 2022
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Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. The drive letters were changed and at next boot they were changed again.

I can't get in to safe mode. The drive boots with the BSOD with the bad config info message. After a short delay it boots again to the screen with about nine options. Including safe mode, safe mode with networking etc. None of those options do anything, but loop back t the same screen.

I can't see any evidence of of the intel rapid storage driver. Is this a Windows driver or something to do with BIOS? It's not there is add remove programs and I haven't noticed in the BIOS options.

By boot order I assume you are referring to the order BIOS searches for the boot device.
It's USB first the internal HDD of which there is only one.

I can reinstall all my programs if I reinstall windows. I can't afford to do that as I am having no joy shifting my Thunderbird emails to another install, everything else is easy.

For clarity. The small system reserved partition should be active and contain the MBR. Currently, it is labelled c:. If I change it it the PE it's back to C: at next boot. My windows partition is ether e: or d:, it changes.
 
Note: I just attempted to reproduce this problem on my laptop by using the intel driver and using a local copy of diskpart to incorrectly assign drive letters.
ie assigned c: to a reserved partition, d: to mbr partition and the windows partition to drive e. I looked at the various files but when I rebooted all the partitions were back to normal with only drive c assigned to the correct windows partition. So, this means it does not work the way I remember and I do not know when it was changed. so my advice may have been useless.
 
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. The drive letters were changed and at next boot they were changed again.

I can't get in to safe mode. The drive boots with the BSOD with the bad config info message. After a short delay it boots again to the screen with about nine options. Including safe mode, safe mode with networking etc. None of those options do anything, but loop back t the same screen.

I can't see any evidence of of the intel rapid storage driver. Is this a Windows driver or something to do with BIOS? It's not there is add remove programs and I haven't noticed in the BIOS options.

By boot order I assume you are referring to the order BIOS searches for the boot device.
It's USB first the internal HDD of which there is only one.

I can reinstall all my programs if I reinstall windows. I can't afford to do that as I am having no joy shifting my Thunderbird emails to another install, everything else is easy.

For clarity. The small system reserved partition should be active and contain the MBR. Currently, it is labelled c:. If I change it it the PE it's back to C: at next boot. My windows partition is ether e: or d:, it changes.
if diskpart can no longer change the drive assignments I would next try
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /scanos
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
reboot and see if it boots correctly.
 
edit: take a look at this:
.
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maybe you can disable the automount in diskpart.exe? I am not sure what will help remove the bogus drive assignments if diskpart can no longer do it.

i was thinking of deleting the bogus drive letters, then turn off the automount and rebooting. otherwise we would have to figure out where this is being done and change it there. (offline registry edit?)
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look at this diskpart.exe command

DISKPART> help automount

Enables or disables the automount feature.

Syntax: AUTOMOUNT [ENABLE] [DISABLE] [SCRUB] [NOERR]

ENABLE Enables Windows to automatically assign drive letters
to volumes that are added to the system.

DISABLE Prevents Windows from automatically assigning drive letters
to volumes that are added to the system.

SCRUB Removes mounted folder pathnames, drive letters, mounted
folder directories, and registry settings, for volumes that
are no longer in the system. This prevents volumes that were
previously in the system from being automatically assigned
their former drive letters and mounted folder pathnames when
they are reintroduced to the system.

NOERR For scripting only. When an error is encountered, DiskPart
continues to process commands as if the error did not occur.
Without the NOERR parameter, an error causes DiskPart to exit
with an error code.

When the AutoMount feature is enabled (the default on some versions
of Windows Server), Windows automatically brings the volume online,
and, assigns a drive letter and a volume GUID pathname to the volume,
when the volume is added to the system. In storage area network (SAN)
configurations, disabling AutoMount prevents Windows from automatically
onlining the volume and assigning drive letters or volume GUID pathnames
to any new volumes that are visible to the system.

Note that the AutoMount feature could only be applied to basic disk
volumes on Windows versions released prior to Windows Vista. Starting
with Windows Vista, the AutoMount feature can be applied to both basic
and dynamic disk volumes.

Example:

AUTOMOUNT
AUTOMOUNT ENABLE
AUTOMOUNT DISABLE

DISKPART>