Total identified Windows installations: 0

Anonymous
2014-01-12T21:17:22+00:00

Please help me.

After updating my Microsoft Surface RT to Windows 8.1, it failed to start up again. 

It will prepair and attempt auto repair, which also keeps failing and will give me:

Log file: C:\windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

I tried to recover with the USB, but this doesn't work.

After trying to bootrec/rebuildbcd I find that there are "Total identified Windows installations: 0"

Also I will get either a Bad system config info blue screen.

I really don't know what went wrong, I am just pretty upset that my tablet remains unresponsive.

What else is there to do?

I live in The Netherlands but bought my tablet in the US. Could this be the problem?

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

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Anonymous
2014-01-13T13:53:47+00:00

Hi,

  1. First Start System Recovery Options. To start system recovery options.

a) Boot from the disk, Once you get the welcome screen of installation with the option “Install now”

b) Click on Repair your computer

c) On the next page click on Advanced Options

d) Now click on Troubleshoot

e) Lastly click on Command prompt and follow the on screen instructions

  1. At the prompt, type the bootrec command as shown below and then press Enter:

bootrec /rebuildbcd

The bootrec command will search for Windows installations not included in the Boot Configuration Data and then ask you if you'd like to add one or more to it.
3. You should see the following message.
Scanning all disks for Windows installations.

Please wait, since this may take a while...

Successfully scanned Windows installations.

Total identified Windows installations: 0

The operation completed successfully.

  1. Since the BCD store exists and lists a Windows installation, you'll first have to "remove" it manually and then try to rebuild it again.

At the prompt, execute the bcdedit command as shown and then press Enter:

bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup

The bcdedit command is used here to export the BCD store as a file: bcdbackup. There's no need to specify a file extension.

The command should return the following on screen:

The operation completed successfully.

Meaning the BCD export worked as expected.

  1. At this point, you need to adjust several file attributes for the BCD store so you can manipulate it.

At the prompt, execute the attrib command exactly like this:

attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s

What you just did with the attrib command was remove the hidden, read-only, and system attributes from the file bcd. Those attributes restricted the actions you could take on the file. Now that they're gone, you can manipulate the file more freely - specifically, rename it.

  1. To rename the BCD store, execute the ren command as shown: ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old

Now that the BCD store is renamed, you should now be able to successfully rebuild it, as you tried to do in Step 2.

Note: You could delete the BCD file entirely since you're about to create a new one. However, renaming the existing BCD accomplishes the same thing since it's now unavailable to Windows, plus provides you yet another layer of backup, in addition to the export you did in Step 5, if you decide to undo your actions.

  1. Try rebuilding the BCD again by executing the following, followed by Enter: bootrec /rebuildbcd

which should produce this in the Command Prompt window:

Scanning all disks for Windows installations.

Please wait, since this may take a while...

Successfully scanned Windows installations.

Total identified Windows installations: 1

[1]  D:\Windows

Add installation to boot list? Yes<Y>/No<N>/All<A>:

meaning that the BCD store rebuild is progressing as expected.

  1. At the Add installation to boot list? question, type Enter Y or Yes, followed by the Enter key.

You should see this on screen:

The operation completed successfully.

meaning that the BCD rebuild is complete.

  1. Restart your computer.

Assuming that an issue with the BCD store was the only problem, Windows should start as expected.

If not, continue to troubleshoot whatever specific issue you're seeing that's preventing Windows from booting normally.

Important: Depending on how you started System Recovery Options, you may need to remove a disc or flash drive before restarting.

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Anonymous
2016-09-06T15:57:15+00:00

Hi Sandor,

To undo the step 5 provided by Vijay B, replace the -h -r -s  to  +h +r +sin the Command Prompt.

Please let us know how it goes for us to assist you further.

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220 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-11-29T02:52:21+00:00

    Soooo.. tried to do what was described in Vijay's post above just a minute ago..

    None of that worked. Couldn't even get through the list of things to do...

    I hit step 4 and computer did NOT return a "operation completed successfully" - instead I got "operation could not be completed as could not find specified file" or something to that effect.

    Ironically - in trying to figure out what was going wrong I started switching directories and looking around (the cmd prompt in this repair mode for me starts me in X:\COMMAND> or something like that - so went to C: - did a list of directory contents -- and wouldn't you know it but the file "bcdbackup" was in the root directory?! Even though it said it couldn't find the file to export in the previous step..... ****? ~28Mb file from the looks of it. So I'm like ... ok... well let's just keep going with the rest of the steps and maybe it does it anyway??

    Now I tried these steps from this point in the C directory (which is what it showed in Vijay's post above anyway so figured that was fine) - but I never got anything other than "can't find specified file" "can't complete operation because" "can't find directory C:\boot" and finally (cause none of the rest of the steps worked I guess) "number of identified windows installations: 0" - wonderful.

    So now what do I do?

    To be fair I didn't try running through all his steps from the X:\COMMAND> or whatever directory the prompt started me in.. I guess that could make a difference?

    What should I do here?

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-10-29T03:18:15+00:00

    I am having the same problem as the OP and many others.  I have spent a week on this issue and found no solutions.

    The hard drive is a 1tb Seagate:  I ran Seagates disc utility to scan the drive and it found no errors:

    From the Command promp I ran >

    <list disk> 

    Disk ###                Status                 Size           Free               DYN         Gpt

    Disk 0                     Online                931 gb      1024 kb              *

    Disk M0                  Missing                  0 b              0 b                *

    Disk M1                  Missing                   0b              0 b                *

    Disk M2                  Missing                  0 b               0 b               *

    <list volume>

    Volume ####               Ltr               Label                    Fs                Type                  Size        Status         Info

    Volume 0                       F                System Rese          NTFS           Simple               100mb     Healthy

    Volume 1                                                                                          Spanned            1862 gb   failed

    Volume 2                                                                                           Mirror                931 Gb    Failed

    Volume 3                     D                 CES_X64FREV            UDF         DVD-ROM          4129 GB   HEALTHY


    When I boot into the command prompt from the Win recovery disc it displays the following:

    X:\sources>

    If I type dir at the command prompt I get 

       Volume in drive x is boot

    Followed by a lengthy directory of files.  (I am guessing these are the start up files from the windows recovery disc)

    In addition I had downloaded a win10 recovery disc with added on programs that could be used within the virtual windows it created.  I cannot remember the name of the program but is could see all the files on the drive and but there were to many of them for me to a removable drive, and every time I installed another HD which my intention was to save those files there, the program would not load.

    So to the best of my knowledge the C: drive boot partition is damaged.  If I attempt to go to the C: directory I get the following error message:

    --The system cannot find the drive specified---

    Next step:

    Tried the following commands as listed from X:\sources>

    bootrec /rebuildbcd

    got the following response:

    Successfully scanned Windows installations.

    Total identified Windows installations: 0

    The operation completed successfully


    bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup
    

    received the following error msg:

    The store export operation has failed.

    The system cannot find the file specified.


    Many others have reported the same error and I can't seem to find a work around to correct this problem.  

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Is there a work around to this?  Is there a third party utility that can be used to resolve this?  I am pretty much at wits end on trying to figure this out. 

    Thx in advance for any advice, (oh and to be clear I read through the 19 pages of posts on this issue.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-10-25T14:24:40+00:00

    Many thanks & regards from Turkey. Recently i replaced my boot disk with ssd. And a while later pc became randomly booting or not. I am aware of all explained here but the last step. I really appreciate my pc is ok now. And hope will last for a while more.

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