Inaccessible Boot Device error in Windows 10

Another one just bit the dust and it is stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair. I am hoping I can get into Reset or Restore.

Microsoft I am outraged. You have people on this forum talking about failure rates of 17% - 50%! That is I have experienced a failure rate of over 20%. This is a huge issue and you are far to quiet. What is the problem and then what is the fix?

I manage about 75 computers for multiple clients and have had this happen on about 13 machines so far. Started happening before the January updates but after the December updates - January updates did not seem to help the issue. What I did notice was that Windows was downloading Intel drivers that seems to be for hardware that was not in the machine. See here from two different machines:

So... I paused Windows updates on the computers I could - most are Pro but a few were Home (I know!) Anyway, that seemed to prevent the issue. So, as I began January updates here was my process:

1 Enable System restore and create a restore point

2 Hide all Intel Drivers using the tool Microsoft provides to Show or Hide updates

3 Do Office updates

4 Un-Pause updates and allow January updates to complete

5 Reboot

6 Create a restore point

So, I left auto update on - I did not pause updates again feeling like I had avoided the issue. Seemed like a good plan.

But, I still have had 3 machines get the issue again. So what updated since I did all the updates? A look at event viewer said that Office tried to do some sort of update - so I have been turning off Office updates. Then I realized that one of the machines that had the issue originally (not one of the 3) did not even have Office installed. I did start to think about antivirus corrupting something... All these machines have Symantec Endpoint Protection. But I can't figure out how to tell if that is the issue. Nothing in the Symantec logs seems to point to anything.

Like others have said - System Restore always works provided you have a restore point that is before the issue is on the computer.  System reset also works but obviously it's alot more work that way.

The interesting thing is - I can tell when the system is going to have a problem upon reboot. I have been on machines where when I try to create a restore point it will never complete. The system is running slow and sluggish. You can just tell it's not right but it's difficult to figure out what is wrong. So, naturally, you reboot it. And bam! - inaccessible boot volume and you pray there is a good restore point since you couldn't create one.

Computers are mostly Dell desktops and laptops but a Toshiba and an HP have had the issue also and I believe all are Intel based with Symantec Endpoint Protection.  Some are brand new Dell machines, some are 2-3 years old, some 3-5 years old - the Toshiba is probably the oldest probably 7 or 8 years old.

Any insight anyone has would be greatly appreciated!

We've had 3 out of 26 PC's go down in the last week - 1 was repairable using the "repair start-up" function, one is currently going through the repair function so fingers crossed and the 3rd cannot be repaired at all as it appears the the C: drive has now become the D: drive (I can access all files on the PC in D: drive through command prompt).  These PC's are 5 years old and we've never had one go down so for 3 to fail within a week is more than a coincidence and has to be related to a Windows update.

Hi,

same story here:

17046 was running fine, and after attempting to update from 17046 to both 17063 and 17074 I always received a GSOD with "inaccessible boot device" on two different systems.

After trying to pin down the trigger I was able to identify the root cause (on both systems): in my case it's definitely Veritas System Recovery (formerly Symantec System Revovery) 16 SP2 (16.0.2.56166).

After uninstalling VSR, I was able to succesfully update from 17046 to 17063 and also 17074, and after re-installing VSR then I again ran into a GSOD with "inaccessible boot device" at the next boot.

Veritas does not offer any support for Windows preview versions, so I hope they are aware of that issue already and will provide a fix for version 16 (though there also seems to be a Beta program for some version 18 at the moment) before 1803 will become available.

BTW, also O&O DiskImage 12 (which I tried as some alternative for disk image backup) seems to be incompatible with 17063 and 17074, as I also ran into a GSOD (I believe it was "Reference by Pointer") at the next boot.