Repair Windows Boot Partition | Includes files and

partitioning
Chris Titus | Jul 2, 2018 | Windows

This walkthrough shows you how to repair windows boot partition and boot from an existing windows installation without
reinstalling windows.

Recently I had an old server with a FAT32 system reserved partition and a bunch of extra partitions. I have already moved all the
data off the server and it was ready for decommissioning. Before, I did this I wanted to go ahead and remove all these old
partitions and just leave the C: Drive with the Windows installation then rebuild the System Reserved partition as NTFS as an
exercise. Many backup programs have issues doing block level images with FAT32 partitions OR you need to do a physical to
virtual setup. For me, I wanted to decommission the hardware but be able to spin up this server in a virtual environment if
needed.

Backup Before Attempting This!

Step 1: Delete old partitions and create new ones
Boot into your partition manager of choice (I used Parted Magic https://partedmagic.com/ ) GParted

Delete extra partitions including the old FAT32 system partition (These all should be very small between 100 MB and up to 2 GB)

Create new NTFS partition with 512 MB of space and label it System Reserved
Shutdown

Step 2: Setup Partitions with the correct drive letters

Launch Windows 10 Install disc / usb

Shift+F10 once you see language select to bring up command prompt

Launch DISKPART

select volume with 512MB (ex: select vol 0 )

assign letter=G: (or any letter that isn’t taken that is NOT C:)

exit OR If Windows operating system is NOT on C:

select volume with windows installation on it

assign letter=C:

exit

Example output:

diskpart
select disk 0
list vol
select vol 0 <---500 MB Partition
assign letter=G:
select vol 1 <--- Large Partition with Windows Install on it
assign letter=C:
exit Copy

Partitions are done. Now time to fix problems with the “type” of partition – By forcing all partitions to be NTFS NT60

bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

Step 3: Copy Boot Records, Fix MBR, and Rebuild BCD

Rebuild new system reserved partition with EFI and regular boot files
 bcdboot c:\Windows /s <boot letter of System Reserved Partion>: /f ALL
bcdboot c:\Windows /s G: /f ALL Copy

Now we can finally rebuild the bcd and master boot record like you see in so many online guides

You can verify the system is seeing the windows installation by doing a bootrec /scanos and then be running through the rest of the
commands to do the rest of the repairs

bootrec /scanos <---Verify it sees the windows install

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot <----Pick the installation will mirror /scanos bootrec /rebuildbcd Copy

Reboot and you are done!

Video
Repair Windows Boot Partition | Includes files and partitioning

#Windows 10

See Also
Spooler subsystem app high CPU usage on Windows 10

Launching a startup program to run as administrator

Windows 10 IIS: C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\rewrite.dll failed to load

Move Website from Linux to IIS

SFC scannow error and Windows 10 corruption

2 Comments - powered by utteranc.es

mikrose commented on Sep 3, 2022

BSOD trouble with your video. When I go to Advanced>Command Prompt, it shows X:WindowsSystem32config like
yours. DISKPART gives me Microsoft Version/Copyright/and MININT-NTKFOEK on 3 separate lines. If I enter
SELECT DISK 0, it says disk not valid. Select Disk 1 and Select Disk MININT-NTKFOEK say disk not valid. What
 SELECT DISK 0, it says disk not valid. Select Disk 1 and Select Disk MININT NTKFOEK say disk not valid. What
should I select for SELECT DISK?

Hi-Phile commented 3 months ago

Thanks Chris your information is helpful and concise. Although I have a different setup, i'm dual booting and using
rEFInd as my boot manager, I was able to still fix both my Arch Linux and Windows 10 so they both can boot after I
migrated from a SATA SSD to a NVME M.2 SSD. I did a full disk sector copy from the SSD to the NVME, then
disabled the SATA drive in BIOS, booted into my Arch Linux ISO from a Ventoy USB, then mounted the ESP partition
and mounted the Arch root fs and ran grub-mkconfig, grub-install, then finally mkinitcpio then rebooted and grub
came up and could boot back into Arch. Once, back in Arch, from a terminal I then ran sudo efibootmgr which listed
the EFI entries, found the rEFInd entry and just reordered it so that it was first in the EFI boot order using:
sudo efibootmgr -o 0002,0000
The '-o' option allows the reordering of the EFI entries, and where 0002 was rEFInd and 0000 was Grub.

Then after another reboot, rEFInd would come up and then I would boot off the Ventoy USB and choose the
Windows 10 ISO. Because i'm not replacing the ESP, I just needed to see the disks and drive letters and made sure
the NTFS Windows partition was C: which it was, but the ESP didn't have a letter, so I only selected the vol where
ESP resided and then assigned the drive letter=g:, then I only ran the following to get the Windows 10 to
successfully boot:
bootbcd c:\windows /s g: /f UEFI
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
I then exited and rebooted back into rEFInd and was able to select Windows from rEFInd and then Windows
complained, about the last boot, so I just selected F8 to boot into Safe Mode and once it loaded, rebooted again and

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Table of Contents

Backup Before Attempting This!

Step 1: Delete old partitions and create new ones
Step 2: Setup Partitions with the correct drive letters
Video
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