Inaccessible Boot Device error in Windows 10

That was an interesting insight into the workings of Microsoft, Wiz.

I wonder if the genius manager who signed off on 1709 was promoted or fired?  Having lost countless hours unsuccessfully trying to recover lost data (even my main backup drive was wrecked)) and having to replace £s of hardware which has now been rendered useless, I know which option I would favour.

Agreed, Ira.  It is not an AV issue.  I have seen cases where a Norton corruption has cause this sort of error on earlier operating systems, but not for Win10.

I had 3 Nortons, 1 Defender and 1 Avira.

Removing bad Windows packages and in-place upgrades fixes them all.  

Not an AV issue.

Since this is a case where Microsoft would need to say why the fix works, it would be admitting that they caused the issue.  Trust me, they will never put that in writing in a public document.

They have many Knowledge Base articles that ordinary people cannot access.

If they do publish a KB article about this issue, it will be an internal only one.  About 14 years ago, (for windows XP) they neglected to comprehensively test a supposed WHQL Intel IDE updated driver before publishing it on windows update.

The logic to determine the host hardware was defective and the Intel drivers were installed on systems with VIA, SYS AMD and NVidia IDE controller chips causing a 0x0000007B Inaccessible Boot Device error.  The fix was slightly easier, because you could reinstall XP from CD onto a non-booting system and make it boot again. (XP was the last Windows version that you could do this on.)  The problem was that if your media was for the initial install was the initial version of XP, or SP1 or SP2, you could not do the reinstall it because SP3 on your system won't let you install earlier versions.    You might have a friend that had the latest version media but then there was a  Retail vs OEM version issue.  The key for one wouldn't work in the other.  So you might not be easily obtain a version that would allow you to fix the problem.

I reported the issue to Microsoft early in the cycle and they immediately pulled the update much like the bad Meltdown patches.

A public KB was never released, although the engineer I talked to acknowledged that he knew about the problem from internal documentation.

Just sayin'

wiz

I had maybe 10 customers come to me with this issue in the last month, but just came across this solution and it worked. I had already tried the CACLS command to reset Full control to Everyone, all the BOOTREC commands, BUILDBCD, tons of things along those lines, nothing worked. On those PCs it was easier to grab documents, pictures, favorites and wipe/reinstall. But the one that landed in my shop today forced me to dig deeper, and your command worked on the first try! It is a wonder I didn't find it earlier.

Instead of D:, I had to use C: for the image location though.

Thanks a million!

Thanks so much for this information. It saved me from having to reinstall my entire system. I have hidden the 4074588 package that kills my usb & causes the BSOD.  I hope this is not an issue with the March release.