Windows 10 bootrec /fixboot access is denied

Question

Hi, I was in a hurry and made the stupid mistake of not backing up before I resized a partition on my new Acer laptop, intending to clone my Windows 10 installation from a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD. Although the hard drive has less than 100GB used space, needless to say an error occurred, Error Code 0xc0000225.

The recovery partition of the HDD is not accessible using Alt F10 at the splash screen as recommended by Acer.

I have been following the advice in this video My attempts so far:

I booted into a Win 10 flash drive and tried automatic repair, which took hours but did not work.

Next I tried command prompt - bootrec /rebuildbcd, which was successful; bootrec /fixmbr, also successful; and finally bootrec /fixboot - but that was not successful and returned an "access is denied" message.

Not sure whether to move on to the next suggestion, which is using Diskpart, or continue trying to find some way to get a successful result from bootrec /fixboot.

Advice would be much appreciated.

[Moved from: Windows / Windows 10 / Windows update, recovery, & backup]

Answer 1

Windows 10 Installation Media:

1. Insert the Media (DVD/USB) in your PC and restart.
2. Boot from the media.
3. Select Repair Your Computer.

Select Troubleshoot.

1. Choose Command Prompt from the menu:

Type in the command:

Diskpart

Type in the command:

List disk            (Note which disk is your Boot drive number mine is 0)

Type in the command:

Sel disk 0

Type in the command:

List vol               (Note which volume is the EFI partition mine is 4)

Type in the command:

Sel vol 4

Type in the command:

assign letter=V:

Type in the command:

Exit

Type in the command:

V:

After you have assigned a drive letter Using Diskpart You can format the EFI partition:

Example: if you assigned a letter V to the partition the command would be:

format V: /FS:FAT32

After the format you need to recreate the EFI directory structure with the command:

MD \EFI\Microsoft\Boot

Then change to the Boot directory with:

~~cd /d V:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot~~

Then run:

bootrec /FixBoot

Finally run:

bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-us /s V: /f All

Type in the command:

bcdboot C:\windows /s V: /f UEFI      (This replaces the above crossed out lines and works in Win 10 1709)

Answer 2

I had the same issue with the command Bootrec /Fixboot "Access is denied",

This only happens with Windows 10 1709 install media.

I tried the same command  with Windows 10 1703 install media and do not get the error "Access is denied".

This looks like an error with the install media for Windows 10 1709

Regards

Mark

Answer 3

Thanks everyone. I found out how to fix it. My laptop is back in business.

First of all I found the drive has a hidden 100MB Fat32 EFI boot partition, something new to me since I haven't been keeping up with current tech. The Windows automatic repair program can't see it so it can't repair it either. What you have to do is use diskpart to give the partition a drive letter and go on from there using command prompt (although I guess it's possible that auto repair might be able to fix it once it's made visible).

The instructions I used were these from Dell, but there are others on the web too. They seemed to work fine for my Acer though.

Good luck!

Windows 10

If you do have the Installation Media :

1. Insert the Media (DVD/USB) in your PC and restart.
2. Boot from the media.
3. Select Repair Your Computer.
4. Select Troubleshoot.
5. Select Advanced Options.
6. Choose Command Prompt from the menu :
   1. Type and run the command :

diskpart 2. Type and run the command :

sel disk 0 3. Type and run the command :

list vol

1. Verify that the EFI partition (EPS - EFI System Partition) is using the FAT32 file system and assign a drive letter to it :
   1. Type and run the command :

sel vol <number of volume> 2. Type and run the command :

assign letter=<drive letter>: 3. Type and run the command :

exit

1. In order to repair the boot record :
   1. Type and run the command :

cd /d <drive letter>:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot
2. Type and run the command :

bootrec /FixBoot

The next step is the same across all the operating systems at this point :

1. Rebuild the BCD store
2. First run the command below to backup the old BCD :

ren BCD BCD.old 3. Now recreate it using this command :

bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-us /s <boot letter>: All

Answer 4

Try Startup Repair as suggested here: https://www.kapilarya.com/how-to-perform-automatic-or-startup-repair-in-windows-10

If you want to continue with Diskpart, this might help: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

Answer 5

I have the same issue.

My System is in a Restore/Recovery bootloop.

I tried the same procedure, with chkdsk, bootrec, sfc, but not DISM yet.

I hit a wall trying "bootrec /fixboot" and wondered why it "Access denied"... same goes for the /offdir command for SFC.

Despite that i have no idea where I can get a log for the bootloop error I got some logs and some are pointing out ther eis a problem (could not open) windowsold.wim, but i removed my OS SSD and plugged it into another PC as external and was able to open and exxtract data from windowsold.wim via 7zip.

Another very troublesome problem is, that the screen goes black asap it switches from the dot circle at boot, to the "restoring...." screen.

I was able to "fix" that by disabling my dedicated VGA (gtx970) in BIOS and activated the iGPU from my Intel CPU instead.

Works, but well that's also not how it should work at all...

Iam really angry this is still happening, despite the problems are widely spread and there is a lot of going on behind the scenes and still MS is not able to fo the upgrae/update problems for Users.

The updates/upgrades should at least stop before installing and ask the user if it should proceed or if the user wants to deactivate 3rd party antivir/firewall, backup data etc... no MS is just forcing the update.

Like in my case i just wanted to check for "regular" updates not an upgrade from 1703 to 1709... I did NOT ask for it, I was just shoved aside and the update installed without any "second thought". iwas not asked to disable my antivir/firewall (Kaspersky) and was not asked to backup data etc. Some programs Apps need a restart too when you want to disable them... id MS consider that? Nope... otherwise i would not be stuck in a bootloop.

On the other hand why was there no initial check, if all necessary system files are NOT corrupted and that these are being stored properly for easy restoring/recovering operations... I don't get this company "update-process-philosophy".

Apart from ranting ;P , I want to ask, if the "clean installation" (from a boot USB device for example), is like an upgrade? Means, the system is migrating data from the previous system, like programs etc. or is it a clean-of-anything and one has to reinstall everything?

Thanks