Inaccessible Boot Device Error on PC; Error creating recovery media

Question

My Dell XPS laptop L502X running windows 10 will not boot up.  It was running fine in February 2018, I turned it off one day, went to turn it back on a few days later, it came up with BSOD that says "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart.  You can restart.  Visit windows.com/stopcode and reference Stop Code: Inaccessible Boot Device.

I restart.  It  goes to black screen with the blue window, says "preparing automatic repair" then "diagnosing your pc" then says "automatic repair couldn't repair your PC with Log file: D:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt.  (Question--why does the log file point to D:\Windows when my PC hard drive has always been C:?)

I click "advanced options"

I have tried all options under the "Troubleshoot" option.

Reset this PC--choosing both Keep my files and Remove Everything--yields the message "There was a problem resetting your PC.  No changes were made."

System Restore to a restore point from 2/4/18 (when the system was last operable) yields "System Restore did not complete successfully.  Your computer's system files and settings were not changed.  Details:  System Restore failed while scanning the file system on the drive D:\ The drive might be corrupt.  You might want to retry System Restore after running chkdsk /R on this disk.  An unspecified error occurred during system restore. (0x81000204)

My problem here is that the error message says "failed while scanning the file system on the drive D:"  My hard drive has always had the letter C:, so why would it be scanning D:.  I believe D:\ is my CD/DVD/BluRay drive which hasn't worked for well over 4 years anyway.

Next I try System Image Recovery and it says Windows can't find a Image to recover.  And No, I never created an image when I purchased the computer back in 2010.  I am pretty sure I got the discs with it, and it came with Windows 7 anyway and my CD drive doesn't work.

I continue down the list of Advanced Options to Startup Repair, which says it couldn't repair my PC.

I next choose the Command Prompt.  It automatically starts at X: \windows\system32> where I type chkdsk /R and it says Cannot lock current drive.  Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.  I change directory to get back to X:\Windows> but cannot seem to get back to X:\ or just my hard drive letter alone to check for hard drive errors or problems.  On X:\Windows, I run chkdsk /R and get the same message.  I run chkdsk alone with no letter and get the following:

The type of file system is NTFS.

The volume is in use by another process.  Chkdsk might report errors when no corruption is present.  Volume label is Boot.

Warning! /F parameter not specified.

Running Chkdsk in read-only mode.

Read-only chkdsk found bad on-disk uppercase table-using system table.

Stage 1---0 bad file records processed.

Stage 2--nothing to note

Stage 3--Errors detected in the uppercase file.

Windows has checked the file system and found problems.

Run Chkdsk with the /F option to correct these.

Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

So, I type in chkdsk /F and it gives me the message, Cannot lock current drive.  Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

Now what do I do?  It isn't write protected.  I am the administrator.  

So, I try the last option on the Advanced Troubleshooting screen, which is to go back to the previous version.  Get the message "We ran into a problem and won't be able to take you back to the previous version of Windows.  Try resetting your PC instead."  Vicious loop.

So, as last resort, I went to download the Media Creation Tool on my Surface Pro 4 tablet to create a usb to reload the operating system on my laptop.  But the media creation does not complete either!  It gets all the way to about halfway through the "Creating" part and then pops up and says "There was a problem running this tool, we're not sure what happened, but we're unable to run this tool on your PC.  If you continue experiencing problems, reference error code 0x80042405-0xA001A.  I tried creating the Boot Media 3 times, choosing different options, using a brand new 16gb thumb drive formatted to FAT32.

Sorry for the long post, but I am trying to figure out what to do next?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, that's the only thing that worked for me.  Before I created the recovery image, I did buy a $6 hard drive enclosure from Amazon and opened my laptop up, took the hard drive out and got all my data off first.  But, my laptop is 8 years old and can be easily opened to access the hard drive to do something like that.  Newer devices, with all their glue and stuff, as I'm now finding out with my tablet, are not as easy to get into to access the hard drive and files.  I fixed my laptop by reinstalling the operating system...and I am 99% sure that what causes the BSOD in the first place is a Microsoft Windows Update.  I am beginning to believe the conspiracy theorists out there hating on these damn Microsoft Updates, but I have had two systems die in the last two months, the first being the laptop in this thread, the second being a one year old Surface Pro 4 tablet that happened to be just a couple months out of warranty.  I am so mad about the tablet.  It was not cheap and now it's a brick after only a year.  And no options to get my files off or service in any way, just offers of money off of an exchange.

Answer 2

Update:  I was finally able to get Windows reinstalled and my laptop working fine.  So, it wasn't my hard drive, it was Windows.

Here's a couple of questions:

1)  What kind of Windows update corrupts the whole system rendering ALL recovery console options useless???

2)  Why was I not able to create a USB Recovery Image using my Surface Pro 4 tablet?  I had another laptop in the house which I was able to use the Media Creation Tool on to create the USB Recovery Image and reinstall Windows 10 on my laptop.  But that was a heck of a lot of work for an error that seems to have been created by a Windows update.  Now I have to reinstall all of the software and programs and everything just because of an update.  Geesh.

Answer 3

Oh my goodness reading this practically describes my last 48 hours!!!! I came into my office and my computer screen was frozen I tried rebooting it and it would get to the lock screen but would show the internet connection as off. After about 5 minutes it shows the internet connection on. When I click the screen to unlock my computer and sign in it shows my account picture but never lets me enter a pass word it just shows the circling dots for about 5 minutes and back to the lock screen. I tried every possible solution like you I couldn't even boot in safe mode. I have the exact same chkdsk issues as you did. 

So is my only option reinstalling Windows?

Answer 4

Hi Jodie,

It's unfortunate that you had those issues, but I'm glad to see that your system is up and running again. Regarding your questions:

1. Based on the error you provided, the reason you encounter the errors is that it looks like**the operating system lost access during startup**.. It might be indeed possible that an update might have caused it, but definitely, it's not intentional. If you want a deeper analysis of what exactly happened on your computer, I suggest that you create a post in TechNetso that our IT Professionals can share their thoughts on the matter.
2. If you are still encountering issues creating a recovery image in your Surface Pro 4, kindly check this link.

Regards.