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Chris Hall

Principal Technical Consultant

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Fix Boot/BCD 0xc000000f Error

File this one under a post for another day / ah yes, I’ve seen that before, cant remember how I fixed it however…

Overview

BCD Error

That’s:

File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: an error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data

Oh joy… OK, here is how to fix:

Step 0: Getting to the Recovery Console

  1. Insert Windows DVD* and after selecting language and keyboard, select “Repair your computer”
  2. Wait for system recovery to run and fail
  3. Click “No” to apply any changes
  4. Cick “Next” to look for a recovery image
  5. Click “Cancel” on the cannot find system image dialogue
  6. Click “Cancel” to exit system image dialogue
  7. Click Command Prompt

Step 1: Ensure your system partition is marked as active

As a reminder - this is a typed command
And this is a comment.

  1. Boot into the recovery console as per step 0
  2. diskpart
  3. select disk 0
  4. list partition
  5. Select the first primary partition. In the screenshot below, the partition to select is partition 2, so select partition 2:

BCD Error Diskpart

  1. detail partition
  2. Ensure that the partition is marked as Active: Yes

BCD Error Active

  1. If not, then active to set the partition active
  2. exit to exit diskpart
  3. exit to exit recovery console
  4. Restart to reboot
  5. Boot and follow step 0 to enter the recovery console again

Step 2: Repair Master Boot Record and Repair Boot Sector

  1. Boot back into the recovery console, as per step 0, run the following commands
  2. bootrec /fixmbr
  3. bootrec /fixboot

Step 3: Rebuild Boot files

You need to know where your Windows folder is mounted within the recovery console. Sometimes it is at C:\Windows, sometimes D:\Windows, sometimes somewhere else. If you have no idea, use the following to get you a list of drive letters currently in use:

1. diskpart
2. select disk 0
3. list volume

Then it’s just a matter of looking for Windows directories on each of those volumes.

So to rebuild the boot files:
bcdboot C:\Windows /s C:
Reboot and you should be done.

*If you can’t find your Windows DVD, have a look

Here for Windows 7 DVDs (Release versions)
Here for Windows 2008R2 DVD (Evaluation version)
Here for Windows 8.x DVD (Evaluation version)
Here for Windows 2012 DVD (Evaluation version)

-Chris