Windows 8 Pro cannot boot - Error 0xC000021a

Anonymous
2012-11-25T18:10:13+00:00

Hi

I upgraded my son's laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro. I has been working fine for a few weeks. But now when booting It halts iwth the error code 0xc000021a. I have tried the following options

Refresh - this fails with the error 0xc000021a

System Restore - this fails with 0xc000021a

Safe mode boot does not work

I can start the cmd console

Any suggestions as to how to proceed?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-07-03T20:21:56+00:00

    Hello All

    There hasn't been a fix for this issue it appears in this topic, I'm sorry if someone already provided you with this tip, but have you all tried to remove any pending update on your system with DISM.exe? This issue seems to be caused by an update which cannot be applied upon the system.

    If you have access to the CMD Console then try to execute the following steps:

    DISM /image:C\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions

    After that rename the file Pending.xml in the Windows\WinSxS folder to pending.old and try to boot your system again. (More detailed explanation for non advanced users: here)

    It has been helpful for some people i advised this, for some it did not work, I hope it at least helps some of you, and I'm sorry if someone else already asked you all to try this.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-08-14T03:40:04+00:00

    Hi Yuri, it's worked perfectly for me!

    Thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-08-23T09:22:48+00:00

    DISM isnt working for me. It keeps showing me unable to acces the image.

    My wibdows 8 computer did a critical update and the next day I turn it on and got this same error, last time I updated I got same error. I want a permanent fix to this cuz im sick of reinstalling windows every few months when microsoft decides they want to mess up my computer. This is getting old fast.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-09-15T23:38:06+00:00

    I followed all the way here and got the 'unable to acces the image' error. So here's the fix for Yuri's fix to work. 

    Note in which letter your windows was mounted by checking cmd's current path. Mine was E for instance. Then replace /image:C\ with /image:E:\ (note the 2nd : ).

    Hopefully it will work just like mine! Thanks Yuri!

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-09-21T02:55:31+00:00

    My question to anyone who had this fixed. Were any of your files or any of your private files erased??

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