I get “Your PC needs to be repaired” and “Error code: 0xc0000225” in Windows 8.

When I boot my Windows 8 laptop (see details below), it displays this message:

Recovery

Your PC needs to be repaired

A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed.

Error code: 0xc0000225

[ A text saying I should use recovery tools on my installation media to fix the issue. ]

Press Enter to try again

Press F8 for Start-up Settings

Press Esc for UEFI Firmware Settings

If I press Enter or F8, the central part of the message changes to:

The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.

File: \Windows\system32\winload.efi

Error code: 0xc0000225

My specific situation:

I have an ASUS UX32VD (R4002H) bought just days ago with Windows 8 preinstalled. I was going to swap the internal HDD for an SSD and was messing with the partitions to make them fit into the smaller SSD before cloning. I am not sure exactly what operation I did prior to the crash, but I probably tried to move a partition (which probably was unnecessary anyway).

I have not made recovery disks (yeah, I know).

When I started SystemRescueCD on the laptop and ran testdisk (for the first time in my life), the partitions seemed OK (to my eye), except for something called Backup Boot(sector|loader|?) that was marked as Bad on one of the partitions. I fixed that, to no avail.

I have no physical representation of a serial number (is that a thing of the past?) and I don't know anything about it being somewhere on the disk. I have no installation media, I didn't get anything like that with the computer.

I have contacted ASUS support, but the answer wasn't very technical.

My obvious question:

How can I get out of this mess? I would prefer if I could repair the partition table or whatever is wrong and get back into the installed OS, but if that is not possible, how can I reinstall Windows 8?

If I need to run a system repair distro from a USB stick and run command line programs, that's no problem.

Thanks!

Original title : I get “Your PC needs to be repaired” and “Error code: 0xc0000225” in Windows 8: how can I fix it?  

Update:

I have resolved this issue. What I did was a combination of the advice on this page:

http://qliktips.blogspot.se/2012/11/fix-windows-8-boot-issue.html

and setting the correct attributes and properties on the various partitions and volumes using FDISK. I had a strange partition that I removed and one or more volumes was of the wrong type (GUID).