Massive error on Windows 8, running out of options, seriously need help

Hey guys, so today I start my day by booting into my 1-week old laptop which unfortunately came with windows 8. After freezing coming from hibernation I did a hard reset and got a 0xc0000225 error.

So the MBR is clearly fucked, big deal I thought since I had that problem before with 7 and XP (reason why I mostly use Linux these days).

Then I had an "oh shit" moment when all the options I normally use didn't do shit to solve this problem, namely:

-Automatic repair (has this ever worked for anyone?)
-Every bootrec command I know
-chkdsk (although its stuck at 10% during stage 4/5, "verifying file data")
-This command BCDBoot c:\Windows /s z: /f: UEFI which comes from a guy who was having the exact same problem until that part because it worked for him but me I get a "failure when attempting to copy boot files"

I tried using refresh even though it would obliterate most of my installs but it says it cant be done because the drive is locked, what?. Format and reinstall are out of the question, I'm in the middle of a trip and have no tools to save my data.

This is the most screwed up windows situation I ever had, I have no idea how to proceed beyond this point and I really need to get this thing fixed.

 

Use "chkdsk /f /r". It takes a long time if you have a lot of files or there are bad sectors. 0xc0000225 is essentially the old 0x000007B error. I doubt the MBR is screwed, if it was you would get an error like "No Boot Device Found". Run chkdsk and LEAVE IT for a few hours.

 

Drive is locked, sounds like some kind of security feature has been triggered maybe due to the hard reset

UEFI and bit-locker etc are a pain in the arse

if you have not already, have a read through of this page theres a number of comments and options to try

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-unlock/a6bb04ff-5dba-4e10-a849-644cd0851bc6

 

Windows 8 is EFI only, there is no MBR any more.

go download a windows 7 dvd and do a custom install, when the hard drive partition screen comes up it will automatically unlock it and it should be fixed (don't actually format or partition anything in widows 7, just reboot after the partitioning window comes up). Make sure you update windows and your bios afterwards (there is a fix in an efi update if your manufacture has released it)

EFI is great thing, it's a way better way to go compared to a bios and gpt allows no limit for partitions. But things like secure boot and bit locker are insane.

 

I have a Windows 8 dvd, is that option still there or I need to use a win7 dvd to do this?

Also the bitlocker is it possible to disable it?

 

it has to be a windows 7 dvd, the windows 8 dvd will recognize the bitlocker. I think it's only enabled because of a bug, normally you have to enable it. Thats why you need to check your bios updates.

 

No it isnt.

bitlocker is unrelated to EFI. You can use bitlocker on any bios based machine. Nothing is insane about bitlocker, its just drive encryption.

The above command is technically correct, but the reason you get the failure copying files is because you are copying the command someone else used (complete with their drive letters). You would need to customize the command for your system/drive letters.

Though it probably wont help if the drive is locked (but you should be able to format a bitlockered drive no problem - its just encryption). Where do you get this "drive is locked" error? If you dont care about losing the data, use diskpart to clean the disk and try again. I suspect windows 8 is trying to check the drive for an existing windows installation and thats why its complaining. Blank drive = no bit locker.

 

I didn't post the whole thing because I was in a hurry but I did the exact same procedure using diskpart to assign letter z: to the c: drive where the windows_os partition is. That guy was having the same problems with the bcd commands but this one worked for him, didn't for me though.

And I have 100GB of data that I rather not loose, how about installing ubuntu or some other distro and try to fix the mbr/efi from there?

 

well the first thing is to see if its actually bitlockered or not.

Can you boot from win7/8/what ever DVD and actually access the drives and/or files in the command prompt?

Have you got a picture of where you see this "drive is locked" error message?

Regarding the commands above - with the command line you entered, the windows partition should be C: and the system reserved boot partition should be on z: - else it wont work.

 

Hm why you don't use a live distro to get your stuff out of the disk and then do whatever you want to do. Also you might want check your memory modules with memtest just in case.

 

Live disk wont help if the drive is bitlockered. Its drive encryption. Though I do not see why/how it would just enable itself. But worth confirming that first.

 

I did a fresh install of Windows 8 Pro some 6 months ago, and BitLocker was not enabled by default. I also got a new notebook recently, same OS, no BitLocker enabled by default. I highly doubt it's enabled by default.
I do remember reading about that drive locking thing, but it's not related to BitLocker at all, though I can't remember what it was exactly.

 

Ok so the windows 7 disk failed miserably, it says "this version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair" so I can't even use the repair tools that the win8 disk lacks.

Well I'm officially out of ideas that dont involve nuking everything and starting from scratch, any ideas?

About bitlocker I can see the files so I think its not on, now what?

 

Have you tried putting the hard drive in another computer as an external device and accessing the files there? You could copy the contents of your user folder and nuke the install.

aside from that I can't see much else to do.

 

Again, Encryption.

 

Taking apart an almost brand new laptop? what if this is some serious problem that needs a replacement and I just voided the warranty? No, it would be better to run a liveCD and use a USB drive to make a backup of everything.

And I can see the files on the disk even those in the system folder, so its not encrypted or locked

 

There's a difference between filesystem level encryption (cannot read file index, i.e. directories and names of files in them) and file level encryption (can browse through filesystem, but files' contents are scrambled). Not sure how BL handles that exactly, put iirc previous versions of Windows operated on the file level.

If I was you I'd cut my losses and just do a clean reinstall. (Then again I wouldn't have been using Windows 8 in the first place...) This is where those backups you hopefully made will come in handy.

 

There's no encryption, the files are just sitting there.

And your best idea is to format? thats the basics I don't need to be told I can do that, everybody knows captain obvious.

On the real solutions topic, how about I make a partition, move all the files there and then restore windows? its a 1TB drive theres plenty of space

 

On most laptops the harddisc is 'user serviceable' and can be removed fairly easily without breaking warranty seals. I'd try using a modern-ish Live Linux distro CD and if that doesn't work, remove the drive, put it in a USB enclosure and try reading it from another computer/laptop that has Windows 8 on it.

 

You don't want to use the recovery tools, you want to click on install, it doesn't matter what version. Make sure you pick custom, not upgrade. When you get the the partitioning screen just hard reboot you computer.