Windows 11 won’t boot

Topic

Hello all,

Just discovered this site and sorry to hear about Woody’s passing.

I recently accidentally shut down
Windows 11 Home and after exhaustive attempts to re-enter it I am now here.

I normally boot into it via a bootloader with Linux Ubuntu and Windows 11 on the menu.

So I have spent hours using tools in the Windows Recovery Environment.

The Windows files are all there and I have backed them up a large disk drive.

I am trying to avoiding resetting the PC and I have yet to make a recovery usb stick to attempt to re-install on boot.

That will be my last resort.

I would like to know if some of the experts here can corroborate my attempt to get to the bottom of this as I am tech savvy enough to do it.

I appreciate any assistance.

I will start off by saying that I have run : chkdsk /F from the command line inside Windows Recovery Environment and the returned message reads:

“The type of filesystem is NTFS.  Cannot lock current drive. Windows can’t run disk checking on theism volume because it is write protected.”

I will stop there and hopefully this one issue can help recover this W11 installation.

Question:  If a disk is write protected doesn’t that pretty much preclude any entry into it?

Replies

Thank you to Woody for the Windows Recovery article.  It allowed me to investigate and hopefullly

resolve my Windows corrupted files.

Chkdsk needs to be able to write to all areas of the disk and this isn’t possible if Windows is running. To fix this, Windows will reboot and run chkdsk on startup. If you can’t boot you can’t fix issues.

I would make a boot USB for the backup program you use, boot from it and make an image backup to external disk.
Then create a Windows boot USB and use it to perform an “over the top” install, keeping data and apps.

Once Windows is running you can re-install the GRUB loader to fix the dual boot.

cheers, Paul

Hi,

I have a usb that I can boot using Ventoy. It has some tools that I can use to visualize the

Windows 11 system that won’t boot.

Through a listing of diskcloning logs It appears there may be a healthy clone image

available if I can get to it.

How can I do this?

Attach the external disk which contains the clone.
Boot from the backup software Rescue Disk (made by the backup software).
Navigate to the backup on the external disk from the booted Rescue Disk backup software.
Restore the backup.

 

Some clarification here. The system configuration is a dual boot

ubuntu / windows 11.

windows 11 disk partition is un-bootable

however the cloned disk

is on the dell recovery disk.

I just need to copy it but not sure how to get at it.

Is it as simple as someone accessing the dell recovery

disk and copying it?

 

Them I could follow your suggestion.

 

goducks25 wrote:

I normally boot into it via a bootloader with Linux Ubuntu and Windows 11 on the menu.

Jerry wrote:

windows 11 disk partition is un-bootable

What happens when you attempt to boot Windows 11?

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

It returns a RE blue screen that reads:

winload.efi is either missing or needs to be repaired

 

<!–more–>

 

How to include attachments?

You need to be logged in (goducks25).  Select file, near the bottom of the page.

 

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

You need to be logged in.
Below the Entry Box on the left, “Select File”
This will open File Explorer on your computer.
Point to the picture (.png, .jpg) and click “Open” – this attaches the file.
There will be a option to “Include in contents” – the pic will appear wherever your cursor is in the Entry Box.

Please let me know if I need to resubmit this attachment for clarity.

It is Gparted .

nvme0n1p9 is the DellSUPPORT partition I was able to see the disk clone I was referring to earlier:

I have a usb that I can boot using Ventoy. It has some tools that I can use to visualize the

Windows 11 system that won’t boot.

Through a listing of diskcloning logs It appears there may be a healthy clone image

available if I can get to it.

 

 

My experience with the Dell Recovery partition is several years old.
On a single-boot Dell, if I recall correctly, F11 on boot would initiate the Recovery install, which would return the computer to Factory condition using an ISO of the factory load set. If you use this, it will restore the whole disk to factory condition (as is when you first received it). I don’t believe it would respect the dual boot or the Linux installation.

It may be that you can repair the Windows boot sector and the dual boot information. I do not have experience in dual booting Win/Linux, but there are numerous here at AskWoody that have knowledge of this.

 

Thanks.  One other question if I could about Windows.  The System came with Windows 10 Home edition and I upgraded it for free to Windows 11 Home.

How will that affect the re-installation / recovery process.

 

 

 

If you use the DellRecovery, it will return the computer to Factory condition. That means exactly as it came from the factory = new.

 

the un-bootable Windows11 partition is /dev/nvme0n1p3

Probably should delete your attachment, crop and resubmit to remove personal information.

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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goducks25

Your Windows boot info (winload.efi) is on partition 1p1 and the Windows files are on 1p3.

It seems you have modified 1p1 and deleted / moved files.

If you had a backup image you could restore 1p1 and probably get Windows back.

cheers, Paul

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goducks25

Hi Paul,

 

It has been awhile since I have been able to formulate a plan to resolve this.

Refreshing the situation:

Dual Boot Ubuntu 24.04 and Windows 11.

Absolutely cannot boot into Windows 11.

Done so far.

Made a restorable Clonezilla image of the Ubuntu partition .

Plan A

Image the Windows ( damaged ) partition with Clonezilla to a Crucial 1TB (exFat) SSD.

The current Windows filesystem is NTFS.  ( see attached – partition 3 )

Question : Is it important to Format the SSD to NTFS or is leaving it as exFat ok?

At this point I will have two restorable partitions – one of each operating system.

What I would like to know is if I want to reinstall the Windows image just to see if it will

work again, will I need to format the entire system or can I just try to restore the W11 partition only.

Plan B

Reinstall Windows with a W11 ISO from scratch.  But same question, I will have to start all over and

format entire disk before new W11 install – I am assuming.

Then, because Ubuntu will have to re-installed I can restore the Clonezilla image and re-install

the Linux bootloader to get back to a dual boot start up.

 

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks.

Jerry

Macrium Reflect has a “repair Windows boot” option when you boot from the rescue USB. This may be all you need.

The SSD should already be formatted. Leave it as exFAT if it is already.

Restoring any partition will not make it boot if the image was made after the boot problem. Try MR repair (above).

I’d stick to making an MR disk image by booting from the MR USB, before you do anything. Then you can also try the boot repair.
No need to complicate things with Clonezilla.

cheers, Paul

Paul,

I did as you suggested by making a Rescue USB Macrium Reflex Home ( Trial Version )

disk.  Booted into the program, tried to choose fix boot problem option and came up

with no recognition of the damaged windows 11 disk at all.  Further before this was prompted to

load drivers if I planned on backing up or restoring anything.

Macrium is really great.  If there is any hope left I would think they would be the ones to fix it.

I tried to create a support ticket however any support must be a paid version member only.

Searching community forums yielded no duplicate problem such as this.

If it asks to load drivers it’s probably not seeing any disks. Did it show the local disk?

MR won’t tell you there is damage, it’s something you need to determine.

cheers, Paul

p.s. please don’t write the response and then paste into the thread. You get weird new lines that makes it hard to read.

Yes it did see the local usb disk and asked to load drivers

What about the internal disk?

cheers, Paul

Paul, Here is a current screenshot of what Macrium rescue disk can ( and cannot ) see.

 

 

You do not have drivers for the PC because only the USB disk is shown.

MR lets you add drivers when you create the USB rescue disk, but you need to have downloaded the driver to the machine where you create the rescue USB.
I don’t have time to chase up a “how to” so you may have to wait for a bit – unless some kind soul has a solution.

cheers, Paul

p.s. please do not post BMP files. They are huge and we have to download them to view. Save your shots as PNG or JPG and attach.

Paul,

The Dell drivers I downloaded and copied to the Macrium Rescue USB

were detected however did not load with the message stating these drivers

won’t work with device.

BTW, FWIW, because I can see the full non bootable Windows partition files and all from my linux partition I went in and copied every possible driver I could and copied it to the USB stick.

No luck.

I’m going to wait for the Macrium rep on Monday. I got through to him.

 

 

 

 

You can’t just copy drivers to the USB, they have to be added to the Windows source file (WIM). This is not straightforward, and we need more info to be able to advise.

If you boot into Linux, can you list the disk drivers in use? That will help us work out what you need for that machine.

Do you have a Windows machine that works? You need this to add the drivers to the WIM.

cheers, Paul

list drivers thati tried copying from the non bootable windows?

yes i have a working windows 11 pro box

also , the drivers from the non bootable windows partitionare window 10 – the original OS windows version.before the upgrade.

don’t the drivers need to be specific to Dell?

or list the drivers that are available to load

when asked by Macrium?

What disk controller does Linux report? This is the one you need drivers for – they will be Dell drivers.

You can copy the drivers to a temporary folder on the good Windows machine and then create the MR recovery USB on that machine. MR instructions here.

cheers, Paul

Paul,

I have located the device controller and have downloaded it to my good W11 PC to a folder.

I also followed the link you provided to create a Windows PE disk and add a driver to the USB disk.

I have encountered a snag in doing so in that the drivers listed under Devices and Drivers do not allow to add any *new* drivers – it only lists the accepted drivers from the local Windows PC.

Therefore it doesn’t really help to create a PE disk without being able to add the correct driver.

You have to extract the drivers to a temp folder so MR can find them. The extracted drivers will have a file ending in INF and probably DLL.
You may have to get the drivers via a ZIP file from Dell. Can you tell us exactly which driver you downloaded and from where and we can see if there is one that works for you.

cheers, Paul

Paul,

Here is the latest driver I have downloaded and begun extracting but haven’t tested out yet.

MEGA

This is the Intel one:

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver Installation Software with Intel® Optane™ Memory (10th and 11th Gen Platforms)

And Dell:

Support for Inspiron 7506 2-in-1 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell Vietnam

I have been able to correctly extract to a folder now where I could not do it before.

Still injecting it into a Macrium PE build is not an option as far as I can tell.

Could this be because I am using a trial version?

I wouldn’t trust the MEGA one.
The Dell site “Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver” has drivers that can be extracted.

1. Open a CMD prompt. Win R cmd Enter
2. Enter this command line: c:\tmp\Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Driver_88DM9_WIN64_18.7.6.1010_A00_01.EXE /s /e=c:\tmp\IntelRST
Where “tmp” is the name of the folder where you downloaded the driver. This assumes the driver name matches the one I downloaded.
The files will be extracted to “C:\tmp\intelrst”.

cheers, Paul

If you reinstall Windows from scratch it may delete your Linux partition. I would make an image backup of the disk before doing anything.

Reinstalling w10 or W11 will be fine. You are already licensed for W10 or 11.

cheers, Paul

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goducks25

I am going to try a backup using Macrium Reflect – making a rescue USB that is.

I see that as the only way to possibly create an image outside of windows.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

If you can boot into Windows Recovery Mode you may be able to restore from a previous time.
Press and hold the Windows Key and press the power button.
Release both keys

MR on a USB will allow you to image to an external disk, if you have the correct disk drivers loaded by MR. This generally requires you make the USB on a similar (Dell) machine.

cheers, Paul

I will report back after trying.  Thanks.

 

I’m running Win 7 and Mint 20.3 as a dual boot. Booting occurs through a Grub menu, with the default boot into Mint, and an option to boot into Win 7.

Maybe some of the following will be useful, although I don’t know what effect, if any, encryption in Win 11 might have.

When I’m booted into Mint I can access Win 7 files in at least 2 ways. One is to use the Disks app which will show all the partitions on the hard drive. I’ve got 6 partitions, the first 3 are Windows partitions and the last 3 are Mint partitions. The second Windows partition is the recovery partition, and the 3rd is the Win 7 OS partition that includes the OS as well as the typical Documents, Users, etc folders. If I select one of the Windows partitions I will be told the size, name, format type, etc. of that partition and also that it’s not mounted. I can mount it by clicking on a small black triangle at the lower left (hover the cursor over the triangle and a small dialog box appears saying ‘Mount this partition’ or words to that effect). Once mounted I will see a window with the files and folders in the partition and can then access the files in that partition.

The other way to access Win 7 files is to open the Files App which in the left hand panel will show the Recovery and OS partions under the heading “Devices”, with an option to mount similar to the black triangle method in the preceding paragraph.

So you may be able to access the Windows Recovery partition to help you get Windows back and bootable.

If you end up having to reinstall Windows you very likely will wipe out Ubuntu and need to reinstall that. The dual boot Windows/Linux combinations I’m aware of require that Windows be installed first and then Linux (at least if you boot through Grub).

Its been several years since I’ve used Ubuntu so some of the terminolgy I’ve used above for Mint might be different in Ubuntu. There may also be some differences due to my running Cinnamon and you probably running Gnome.

Hope this helps.

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mledman

The device ID 9A0B and 9A1B look unfamiliar to me.

Through some Google searching it is not consistent

with the Dell Intel Rapid Storage Technology

drive I extracted to rebuild Macrium Rescue Disk.

 

Could this be the core reason the drivers aren’t losing?

 

9A0B is the Intel RST controller and you need the drivers for it.

It seems you can load them from your boot USB by clicking “Load Driver”.
All you need to do is copy the extracted files we discussed above to the USB.

cheers, Paul

Point taken. Only problem is that after extracting

(copying) all the.sys  and.inf files to the C:\boot\ Macrium folder

and trying to load them they are not showing up in the folder.

They should be there unless rebuilding the Windows PE disk

didn’t take?

 

 

Copy them manually to a NEW folder on the USB. Then you can browse to them from Macrium.

cheers, Paul

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goducks25

Paul,

I was able to successfully install the RAID controller ( iaStorVD.inf ) because I changed from Windows 11 Macrium PE to Windows 10 PE and now I can see the previously unviewable windows partition from inside Macrium.

I still have to download and add the USB Controller and I should be good to go.

Because my original situation was that Windows may be corrupt I don’t know but want to try making an image of it and re-install it.

Would this surely create problems or is it a viable attempt to recapture the original

Windows installation?

Thank you for you patience and I have to thank Macrium support as well.

 

 

 

You should be right without the USB driver – the boot USB works.
Plug an external USB stick / disk and see if MR can find it.

cheers, Paul

goducks25 wrote:

Because my original situation was that Windows may be corrupt I don’t know but want to try making an image of it and re-install it

You want to use the MR “fix boot” option, nothing else.
This will probably break the dual boot, but we can work through that once you have Windows booting.

cheers, Paul

Paul,

MR Fix Boot did create login to safe mode at least.

Immediately after MR Fix Boot the dual-boot was gone but strangely now it ( the dual boot )

is back and working normally except for Windows log in.

So at this point I can get in to Windows Safe mode at least.

I just booted up Windows 11 ISO using a Ventoy USB.  I selected “Boot in normal mode”

and was transferred to a black screen with the following :

 

Windows Boot Manager

Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware of software change might be the cause.

To fix the problem:

1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Change your language settings and then click “Next”.
3. Click “Repair your Computer”

If you do not have this disc, contact sys admin or manufacturer for assistance.

File: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD

Status: 0xc000000d

The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.

 

This may be something….

I’m wondering since Window10 PE Macrium worked at fixing the windows boot at least to safe mode that if instead of using a Windows 11 ISO a Windows 10 ISO install disk would

do better .

 

When selecting Windows Boot Manager in the dual boot menu all that was returned was a blue screen with “RECOVERY” Your PC couldn’t start properly

Ater multiple tried the OS on your PC failed to start so it need to be repaired.

Error code: 0xc00000001

F1 Recovery Environment does not work

F8 Startup Setting is a list of 9 options.

From here Safe Mode can be accessed

 

Good news.  I am now doing a system restore as once I logged in to safe mode  as administrator

all kinds or recovery options became enabled .

I will update you and hopefully this will be marked as resolved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I removed myself from the Windows Insider Program a week agao.
24H2 arrived in Windows Update last night, installation failed, same
situation as in the past when I tried to manually upgrade. You can not switch from the Insider Edition without loosing your installed programs and settings, so left the Insider Edition and waited for the next consumer Windows so I can upgrade without loosing anything.
It arrived in Windows Update last night, installation failed, same
situation as in the past. It went to 30 percent then rebooted and
reverted back to what it was.

This morning, turned on, no boot. Blue screen, said there was a problem and select
F1 or escape. F! to enter Windows recovery mode, escape to go into the
EFI bios. F1 only restarted the system, back again to the blue screen!
A problem with the recovery partition!

I booted from USB and restored my backup of a week ago.

I found a DOS command to enter and turn on/recover the boot partition (
re-enabling Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) using the
command|reagentc /enable) |and Windows started downloading a new 24H2 in
Windows update again. I restarted as instructed by Windows. It updated
to about 30 percent and hen rebooted. It returned to the progress screen
at 30 percent then the screen went black but the computer was still
running with no disk activity.

After about 15 minutes I hit reset and it went back to the progress
screen, finished and is now working fine with the new system. Nothing
lost.

So I finally found out what the problem was! Now I need to make new
backups!

goducks25 wrote:

I just booted up Windows 11 ISO using a Ventoy USB.  I selected “Boot in normal mode”

Ventoy uses a different system and is not a good test of your machine.
Stick to booting from the internal hard disk.

cheers, Paul

Paul ,

 

Glad to report System Restored to before this situation happened.

It has been a twisting and turning adventure.

Thank you for your expertise.

Cheers to you

 

 

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Paul T