Inaccessible Boot Device error in Windows 10

Anonymous
2018-01-09T16:46:16+00:00

I manage multiple computers running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit with the latest Current Branch and recently had multiple computers randomly startup with this BSOD: Inaccessible Boot Device.

I have tried everything:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-update-causing-inaccessible-boot-device-error-windows-10

Which recommends deleting registry keys and install packages, though no pending installs could be found

SFC /SCANNOW - No corruption found

CHKDSK /R - Some minor issues corrected

BOOTREC - Scan OS shows 0 windows installations

FIXBOOT - Successful, but this tool finally made the entire process fail without being able to get to the recovery environment, just boots to the legacy screen and shows options for safe mode, but those fail too.

I am at my wits end, because I find thousands of websites and desperate users and admins, but the only fix that works is to clean install. I can't clean install the whole company. This is insane, there has to be a better known cause / fix out there...

*Modified title for accuracy*

*Original title: Inaccessible Boot Device error - cause? fix?*

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2018-01-17T17:16:49+00:00

WIN 10 BSOD FIX - Inaccessible Boot Device - THIS WORKS!  I Just Repaired 2 computers that went down at the same time last night on 1/16/18

Good Afternoon Bobby,

Here is the fix I came across from another kind IT tech, please see below.  Credits go to them, I'm just forwarding so everyone can finally get their computers back up and running.

Boot Windows 10

Go to Repair

Go to Tools/Options to get a command prompt.

Confirm the drive letter for the Windows image. Usually D: –> dir d:

Run the following to view the installed packages which will also show a date of install.

Dism /Image:D:\ /Get-Packages

Find the package(s) that were just installed by date. Run the following command on the last installed package:

example: dism.exe /image:d:\ /remove-package /packagename:Package_for_KB4014329~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.1.0

Reboot.

The patch that caused my issue was from 1/6/18 or 1/10/18     Remove the latest windows update entry with Rollup Fix in it's name.  Once complete, close command prompt, turn off computer.  Power back up.  You should be back into WIN10.

If you still receive BSOD, rinse and repeat with the next latest update, try it again.  You'll eventually boot right back into WIN10.

I hope this helps.

Have a great day.

Showster

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-02-12T18:09:15+00:00

    Hello,

    We worked on the issue over the weekend. Some interesting facts.

    1. We chose the in-place upgrade on the running machines. This worked smoothly. The new image needs to be downloaded from MS site. Older images won't let you preserve apps and settings meaning it would not be an "in place upgrade".
    2. We had one machine with repeated BSOD after a second reboot. Dism /cleanup-image  with install image heleped, but the packages were left in corrupted state. When the machine was back on, in place upgrade worked just great.
    3. We have the Windows Update Service disabled now. We do not want any more trouble. For the critical PCs we use now Clonezilla (open software for imaging HDDs ). After successful clone (image stored to network server) we will be turning on Windows update service  only to install updates. After windows updates completes, the Windows Update service will be disabled. This way time wasted in case of unsuccessful Windows Update will be limited only to restore the image with Clonezilla from the network server.
    4. Interesting! We found out that all of the machines affected had dual partition table problem. Our sample is very small though.  The machines that weren't affected had either GPT or MBR. On the machines affected existed both MBR & GPT - like working MBR and corrupted abandoned GPT (or the other way round). Removing the unneeded partition table caused a small boot problem - bootrec /fixboot was fixing it. Windows  partition tools did not show the problem that there exist two partition tables, but on Linux console I could easily clean up the not needed partition table using sgdisk -z  or fdisk command line tools.

    You can't have both MBR and GPT on the same drive. 

    Presumably you mean you had two hard drives in the machine.

    You can have dual boot on either MBR or GPT drives but the boot drive itself can only be one or the other.

    They are mutually exclusive.

    wiz

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-02-12T18:04:01+00:00

    There actually is a space in the text.  However I went back and added another for clarity.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-02-12T09:16:16+00:00

    Although it is possible that a future update will crash your systems, it is very unlikely. The meltdown patch affected a lot of files including ATA drivers.  I believe that those drivers were the cause of the problem.  I expect that Microsoft learned a lot about extensively testing updates before releasing them on this one.

    Microsoft support has been jammed because of it with 45 minute to an hour wait times to get to the initial support person.  Those initial support people will never be able to get your system bootable.  In some cases some of my clients' machines were made worse through their efforts.

    The sudden release of the existence of the Meltdown and Spectre cpu flaws put a short fuse on Microsoft responding to the threat.  They released something that was not ready.  This is not likely to happen again.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-02-11T21:48:41+00:00

    Hello,

    We worked on the issue over the weekend. Some interesting facts.

    1. We chose the in-place upgrade on the running machines. This worked smoothly. The new image needs to be downloaded from MS site. Older images won't let you preserve apps and settings meaning it would not be an "in place upgrade".
    2. We had one machine with repeated BSOD after a second reboot. Dism /cleanup-image  with install image heleped, but the packages were left in corrupted state. When the machine was back on, in place upgrade worked just great.
    3. We have the Windows Update Service disabled now. We do not want any more trouble. For the critical PCs we use now Clonezilla (open software for imaging HDDs ). After successful clone (image stored to network server) we will be turning on Windows update service  only to install updates. After windows updates completes, the Windows Update service will be disabled. This way time wasted in case of unsuccessful Windows Update will be limited only to restore the image with Clonezilla from the network server.
    4. Interesting! We found out that all of the machines affected had dual partition table problem. Our sample is very small though.  The machines that weren't affected had either GPT or MBR. On the machines affected existed both MBR & GPT - like working MBR and corrupted abandoned GPT (or the other way round). Removing the unneeded partition table caused a small boot problem - bootrec /fixboot was fixing it. Windows  partition tools did not show the problem that there exist two partition tables, but on Linux console I could easily clean up the not needed partition table using sgdisk -z  or fdisk command line tools.

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