Windows 7/2008 R2 Service Pack 1 fails with 0x800f0a12

Article
02/17/2011

You might encounter an issue during the installation of SP1 for Win7/R2 where the installer exits with: 0x800f0a12

This is due to the automount policy for your machine being set to disable. We block the service pack installation in these cases because we need to be able to write information to the BCD store during install and with automount turned off, we are not able to. To resolve this, re-enable automount and then install the service pack. Quick steps to do this in case you forgot are:

1. Run DISKPART

2. automount enable

3. Restart

4. Install SP1

An additional link: https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-service-pack-1-sp1-installation-error-0x800F0A12

If your problem is not automount policy then you might have one of the other scenarios which can cause this error to occur (such as a third party boot loader). Here are some other steps to try:

Ensure that the System Reserved partition is marked active (you can do this in Disk Management or DISKPART)
If you dont have a 100MB System Reserved Partition, make sure the drive with your Windows installation is active
Make sure that the Windows installation is the only active volume on your installation
If you have a 100MB System Reserved partition and it is marked active, give the partition a drive letter and reattempt the service pack installation
If you have SnapDrive from NetApp installed, it may need to be removed for the installation to work properly (source: https://communities.netapp.com/thread/13704)
Your BCD file could be corrupted, this can be checked by running BCDEDIT at an elevated command prompt to see if it returns normal values to you. If it does not you'll need to rebuild it.
- Rebuild the BCD store on your system by booting into WinRE and run the command: bootrec /rebuildbcd to rebuild the file
Lastly, disconnect any external devices, particularly storage devices such as EBooks and thumb drives

Let me know your results.

--Joseph

Comments

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Dolmen; Nope your steps are mostly fine. I would think that the bootrec /rebuildbcd command alone would have done it for you though. BCD corruption is something I have seen here recently that seems to be causing the stragglers for this issue. I'll update the blog shortly.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Actually, its the sda2 that would need to be boot, we just need to be able to write to the BCD store on sda1. I'm not familiar with gparted though, so I'm basing it off of what I know about Windows boot.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
JJ; Not sure why you would think we would do this on purpose, but that wasnt the case at all.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I dont know of anything else you can do here, maybe someone might have another suggestion. To this point I havent seen one of the above suggestions resolve this issue so you might want to go back and do them all again?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You can rebuild the BCD store by renaming it and then booting into WinRE and running bootrec /rebuildbcd. You might have to manually rebuild the SmartON OS entry though.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Here's the only MS related link I could find for it: technet.microsoft.com/.../gg441289.aspx
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Drew; the import/export wouldnt repair corruption it would just add and remove the same file.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Cool; I'm glad that the BCDMD tool found it for you. Glad everything worked out for you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@la pouter; Ce que vous avez essayé déjà ? Vous pouvez passer en revue les suggestions sur ce thread d'assistance. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
the DiskPart worked like a charm. Thanks for the tip!!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Dan; There's two parts of this. One is an actual problem (a lot of these have come in because of corrupted BCD stores, improper configuration, etc). The error code was designed to handle those and it does that. The second part of this is how best to handle these situations so they are less painful to all of you as Windows users. That's something I have brought up with the product group already. We'll see what comes of that. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
CheckSUR wasnt designed with that particular type of failure in mind, so while it might report some of the issues, it wont likely report all of them.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ok, that makes sense on your issue then. Markus doesnt have an active bit on his SR partition which is most likely causing his issue. Thanks for that information.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Glad I could help.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You can get into Windows Disk Management by right clicking My Computer and choosing Manage. Disk Management will be the bottom tree in the MMC. GParted, mentioned above, is located here: gparted.sourceforge.net NOTE: I dont support that tool
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I've had other errors installing SP1 but I had other issues(missing files and damaged system files), now fixed, SFC/SUR find no errors but got the 0x800F0A12 error. I have a Dell XPS 8100, no dual boot. I have a Fat 16 Dell Utility, NTFS Recovery and the NTFS OS C: which is marked as active. I took a side trip because of ignorance where I got a "missing Boot Manager" but "somehow" corrected that. I noticed in Disk Manager the Recovery partition is marked as Primary whereas before it was System, Primary and Active before my "missing Boot Manager" problem and my first 0x800F0A12 error. I'm a Paragon BackUp user which "might" have been part of this problem?? Now is this 100MB System Reserved Partition something that the SP1 is supposed to create or something one might have? I haven't tried the Step One approach yet
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes, thanks. And thanks Danielle for bringing this up.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Nick; Glad you got it taken care of.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Cor; I dont think it has anything to do with the information in this thread per se, but my initial suspicion would be that the system reserved partition which holds the boot folder is on another volume in the NAS or that the active bit is missing.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sorry to hear that Mike. At least you've done one thing I wish more people would and thats backup your system. That's always good practice regardless of what OS you run.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Awesome, glad that worked out for you. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
So Danielle, you marked the System Reserved partition as the active one and not the Windows installation disk? Just want to make sure I know which drive is getting the active bit in this scenario so I can work on a mitigation plan.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Excellent Greg, glad it worked out for you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Maybe I am missing something, but how is that MSFT messing up exactly? We create the partition if you have available space and we dont if you dont have the space. All that means is that to utilize Bitlocker on your system you would need to free space to create a System Reserved partition.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks for letting me know. Glad that worked for you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Davor; You'll have to add an entry for OpenSuse back to the bootloader. I'm not sure how they add their entries though, sorry. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sorry, I'm an idiot today and not thinking properly. Yes, you're right it should be the SR partition because that's where the boot files are DUHHHH. Maybe I need sleep :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
joscon: If it can error out an install, CheckSUR should check them. The CBS.log file sure doesn't spell it out plainly as to what is missing, only that there's a problem with "prnbr005.inf". At least to me anyway. :-) On my first error installing SP1, CheckSUR caught 54 missing MUM files in servicing packages, replaced them, CheckSUR then caught 53 missing CAT files, replaced them which got me to error 800F0A12. Your suggestions brought me to my current 80073701 error.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Max; Did you have a System Reserved partition on your Windows installation?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Nick, run the BCD commands in WinRE (boot off of a DVD and choose repair your PC) and let me know how it goes.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You most likely marked the wrong volume active Kourosh. You can boot into WinRE and use DISKPART to add a drive letter to your system reserved partition and then mark that as active. Or use startup repair there and it should fix it for you.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you had any other externally attached storage, try removing it as well.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Markus; No, the two arent equivalent. You're mounting the volume with your command whichmight not persist through the reboot (which is when we write data to the BCD store). To enable autmount, just follow the steps above. I've seen many instances of this now being due to dual boot Linux installations as you mentioned. The other thing I have seen people do if automount doesnt work for you is either A) give the drive a letter, which it appears to have done or B) Boot into WinRE and run the startup repair function inside of WinRE and then retry the installation. Let me know if either of those help you out. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi, In my case I can't make the Windows system partitions active, since they are located in the extended partition but only primary partitions can be made active. In this case it is possible to install the Win 7 SP1 by creating a link on the active boot partition linking to the system partition using the Windows mklink command. A requirement is that the boot partition is formated with an NTFS file system. If these requirements are fulfilled proceed as follows:

Run cmd.exe as administrator.
Make sure the boot partition has a drive letter assigned to it, if not assign one via the Windows Disk Management.
cd to the boot drive.
type: mklink /D C C:
Finally restart the SP1 installation via Start->Windows Update again. Now the installation should not run into the above problem again.

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@exasperated; The BCD is pretty easy to rebuild on its own, so I wouldnt worry too much about that. Can you get the output of your current drive layout posted here so I can take a look at it?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Alex: the system partition doesnt need to be the first partition in your layout, it just needs to be the only ACTIVE one at the time of the installation. I assume you mean automount and not autoboot in your second question and that policy is enabled by default, turning it off is actually what causes one form of this problem in the OS
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
A few weeks ago when I first tried installing SP1 I'd get a Unknown Error 490. At that time the SP1 update was shown as 16.9MB. I fixed all my problems and at that time the SP1 important update disappeared from my list. A manual check brought it back but the file size showed 73.6MB-892.6MB to this date. I first tried that and got a error 80073701 wu_dt000! I Google'd that and it was all non-English posts. Anybody else show the large file too? All my missing files were associated with XP Mode in windowsservicingpackages folder which are language files, so I wonder if this caused the strange error? Since then I use the downloaded version dated 3/15/11 which isn't the original as its been changed at least once that I know of.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Jay; No, there isnt a supported way to get you to RTM at this point. The RC should be a hard block when attempting to install RTM.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It's always interesting to me to see people that think this is solely a Microsoft problem. The way I see it, your Linux installation had as much to do with messing up my service pack installation as my service pack installation did with your Linux. --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@wptski; Have you manually copied the printer driver files manually into the packages directory? I see them in the log as well.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sure thing, glad to help as much as I can.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Are you making the Windows drive active or the System Reserved action? You need to make sure that the drive with the boot files is active, which is usually the SR partition when you have one.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
joscon: I am correct about the missing files then? Other than getting them from another PC, is there another source for the printer driver files? SUR isn't designed to check these packages? What about the "d:w7rtmbasewcpcomponentstorecsd_locking.cpp" in the log?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Drew; I appreciate the pickiness but in this case the terminology is correct. We do call it the system reserved partition and its used for the boot files and as storage space for a system in the event you implement Bitlocker. To use Markus's entries from above and your terms: Partition | File System | Label |Size | Used | Unused | Flags /dev/sda1 | ntfs | System Reserved | 100 MiB | 33 MiB | 66 MiB | --- <----boot flag should be here on the sytsem partition (note it is called system reserved) /dev/sda2 | ntfs | --- | 335 GiB | X GiB | 335-XGiB | --- <--- Windows boot partition /dev/sda3 | extended | --- | 37 GiB | | | boot, lba MSR is definately not the same thing and I agree with you that we've made a lot of this too confusing (which is one of the reason that after many years of doing this I still had the brain fart in the comment above). Does that make sense? --Joseph
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@wptski; It's looking for a C++ file. We dont use DVD media post install so I am not sure what the context of this without the log itself.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I have two drives. Linux is installed on the first, GRUB is there too. Win7 is on the second and is chainloaded from GRUB. To be able to install SP1 I temporarily booted Win7 directly from the second HDD (using BIOS boot menu) two times: for the session where installation was started and for the mid-installation reboot.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
joscon: If I set it up correctly you should be able to download the entire CBS.log during the SP1 install attempt at:cid-03f8c606baa1b49f.office.live.com/.../.Documents
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The bootmgr issue is because you removed the active bit from the system reserved partition (the 100MB partition), thats where we keep the boot files. I have no clue with regards to the grub piece.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As W7 pre-SP1 install had issues with the BIOS setting for SATA in non-raid mode, i got me a fresh new disk and switched the BIOS to RAID mode (took forever to find this was the problem, Linux and XP didn't have this issue afaik) and presto, clean W7. Now SP1 halted with the error this thread is about. Have a few questions here, and yet another solution :) W7 has it's own disk now, but i had to partition it with linux (gotta love ubuntu live disk :), why doesn't W7 offer to partition (a brandspanking new 1Tb) ? Created 3 partitions, all NTFS, installed W7 in the first one, later on changed paths of user data to second partition, again good practice and easier on backup strategies....should be an install option at least. Second, i don't have the System Reserved partition, though W7 had all the space it needed, why? I still have a dual-boot system, but only if i change the boot-sequence in BIOS to boot from sda (linux) where W7 is @ sdb. So if sda is the one to boot first i get grub2, if i put sdb first in the list, i boot straight into W7. My default setting is sda (grub2) I checked out all the solutions here, but none worked, flags were all there from the start, my solution in the end turned out to be (brainfart on my part joscon ;) to set the W7 disk first in the BIOS hd-boot-sequence. SP1 installed after that. Still, i have to agree with nz that Microsoft is behaving like they're the only OS in the universe, where all the others (BeOS rip) at least deal with NTFS etc... no offense Joseph :) Thanks very much for this article, saved me a reinstall.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
joscon: I know that I'm getting a different error now than this blog is about. Looking at the CBS.log at the time of my error using the stand alone installer. It has a problem resolving a printer driver package(prnbroo5.inf) which is on my PC. Not sure if it's missing from the installer or not but there is this entry: d:w7rtmbasewcpcomponentstorecsd_locking.cpp. Looks like it's looking for something on the CD/DVD drive, doesn't it??
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Okay, the suggestions have allowed the install to start and run about 16 minutes but then I now get, ERROR_SXS_ASSEMBLY MISSING (080073701). I guess this is progress!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Hello Joseph, Are your steps 1 and 2 equivalent to 'mountvol /E'? If so, I did the steps. Yet I still can't install SP1?! If not, how do I enable automount? (I ran diskpart, but what do I have to then) Other people noticed that it might have something to do with Linux being installed on the same HDD. I too have both Windows 7 and openSUSE 11.3 installed, with GRUB as my boot manager. Any idea how to install SP1 in this case? Thanks for your time!
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
For SP1 to install on multi boot machines, windows' system partition has to be active. So you have to set the boot flag to system (with gparted, for instance)
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Again MS messed up. If you partition the harddisk yourself before installing Windows 7 and use up all of the available space it will install without creating that hidden 200MB BCB partition. In that case the BOOT folder will be created on drive C.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Hello All, unfortunately, Joseph's steps 1--4 didn't work for me. So, I followed Danielle's suggestion and looked at my hard drive with 'gparted'. Here is the essential result: Partition | File System | Label |Size | Used | Unused | Flags /dev/sda1 | ntfs | System Reserved | 100 MiB | 33 MiB | 66 MiB | --- /dev/sda2 | ntfs | --- | 335 GiB | X GiB | 335-XGiB | --- /dev/sda3 | extended | --- | 37 GiB | | | boot, lba I take it that sda is the famous windows system partition everyone is talking about? Sda2 is the partition where windows 7 is installed, and sda3 holds openSUSE 11.3. If I understand Danielle correctly, I would have to

set the flag of sda1 to 'boot'.
remove the 'boot' flag from sda3 as well (two boot partitions seem odd to me). Having done that I can boot Windows 7 and install the service pack as usual. After everything is installed properly, I can change the settings back to the above. I am a newb at this, and therefore appreciate your help. Thanks for your patience!

Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Yes, that is it. I triple boot Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 13. Grub2 used with Ubuntu left the bootflag on Windows system reserved partition. But the Fedora install moved the boot flag (though I didn't install Fedora's bootloader ; I use sudo update-grub on Ubuntu). I'm not sure but I think Fedora and OpenSuse stull use grub legacy.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
yes, the system reserved partition. If you go to Windows disk partitioning tool, the system reserved partition will be "active" and SP1 will install.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
I got the same 0x800F0A12 error, but the DISKPART stuff didn't help. I have Fedora 14 installed on the same HD in free space, using/installed the Fedora bootloader. It's a Sony Vaio laptop and its recovery partition has been left intact. I have no idea if this has had any additional affect. Simple resolution in my case:

In "Disk Management" tool, set the (C:) volume to 'Active'
Try to install SP1 again via Windows Update.
Success! No need to reboot between steps 1 & 2.

Anonymous
February 23, 2011
joscon, No System Reserved partition. Compared to Markus Schwarz gparted table, I have at /dev/sda1: Partition | File System | Label |Size | Used | Unused | Flags /dev/sda1 | ntfs | Recovery | 14.51 GiB | 13.68 GiB | 850.57 MiB | diag
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Hello All, thanks to your help I could install the service pack successfully. Here is what I did:

I noticed that in YaST the boot loader had the option 'Activate this partition when selected for boot'. So I check this option and rebooted (with hindsight, just switching the flags with gparted would have been easier).
Back in Windows 7 could install SP1 without any further problems.
Problem was, that now my system would always boot to Windows and ignore grup entirely
But using gparted I removed the 'boot' flag from sda1 and set it back to my 'sda3' Everything is fine now, and the two operating systems lived happily ever after :)

Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Great, thanks for coming back with your result.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
You're welcome. I'm always happy to give back what I have learnt on blogs like yours.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
My original install is XP. I installed W2K08 R2 on a partition I created using Acronis. Essentially, the MBR resided on the XP volume, so using the diskpart or mountvol commands did not help resolve the 800f0a12 error. I used EasyBCD to simply move the MBR from the XP volume to the W2K08 volume, and was immediately able to install the SP1 after reboot.
Anonymous
February 23, 2011
Just to be picky, i would not be refering to a 'System Reserved partition'. I would call it the 'System partition' on a BIOS system, or the 'EFI System partition' on an EFI system. en.wikipedia.org/.../EFI_System_Partition 'System Reserved partition' could be mistaken for 'Microsoft Reserved Partition' - not the same thing: en.wikipedia.org/.../Microsoft_Reserved_Partition Conversations about system and boot partitions always remind me of this quote: "You may find [the Microsoft documentation's] definitions to be a little cross-eyed. […] In a nutshell, the boot files in the system partition load the system files from the boot partition. Confusing? You bet it is." homepage.ntlworld.com/.../boot-and-system-volumes.html Worse luck; Boot partition = %systemdrive%
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
Where can I find this "disk managment" tool mentioned avove? Christian
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
I have set the "active" flag for the 100mb system partition and now SP1 installed successfully. Did not yet check if Linux is still working. Chris
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
Joseph, i can't find a reference to "System Reserved partition" in MSFT documentation. The article "Understanding Disk Partitions" states "the active partition is typically a separate partition called a system partition". technet.microsoft.com/.../dd799232(v=ws.10).aspx I'm not saying i don't agree with you, but i can't find a reference. I actually like the Microsoft terminology (in spite of what i quoted above). The [EFI ]System [Reserved] partition contains a menu of 'systems', and links to each system's boot loader (post XP anyway). Also, a lot more booting occurs winload.exe -> explorer.exe than BIOS -> bootmgr.exe. Perfect sense!
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
> Did not yet check if Linux is still working. No, the grub boot menu was no more appearing. So I tried to reset this "active flag" for the 100 MB system partition, but this was not possible, so I have put to active flag for the windows main partition. Now the computer is not booting anymore (bootmgr missing). Any advice ? Should I try to reset the flags with gparted ? Christian
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
OK, I've tried everything in the article and the comments and STILL CANNOT get SP1 to successfully install. I have Win7 x64 and Ubuntu 10.1. My Ubuntu is installed on a second hard drive and WIn7 on my primary.

I've used the DISKPART method in the article itself and that didn't land me anything at all.
I went ahead and tried the GParted method of setting the boot flag to my 100MB System-reserved bit and removing the boot flag from my Ubuntu install. Nothing.
I've also attempted setting the two sections of my C: drive (system-reserved and the actual Windows installation) to active and that didn't bring me anything at all. Does anyone have any other ideas on how I can go about getting my machine updated?

Anonymous
February 24, 2011
I had this exact same problem today on my HTPC. The hidden partition was already Active, so on a whim, I tried assigning it a drive letter, using Disk Management. That worked, with no reboot required. Clearly, the code that searches for the hidden partition is unnecessarily fragile. I can't understand why this problem wasn't discovered and fixed during the testing period.
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
OK, I went ahead and found a solution to my problem: After doing everything mentioned in the original post and trying the solutions in the comments (especially those that dealt with Ubuntu directly I paid special attention to), I ended up just disconnecting the second HDD that holds my Ubuntu OS. Rebooted into Windows and got an error saying my copy of Windows was not activated (I am using a student version from my university) so I just used the activation utility that came with the OS again and that solved that problem. Went ahead and did what Joseph said (and ONLY that) with his quick, four-step process and got SP1 installed and working. Thanks to Joseph for writing the article and Ed Bott for bringing it to my attention on Twitter and thanks to all those writing comments to help out the rest of the community. You all rock!
Anonymous
February 24, 2011
I ended up having to reformat, create a second partition and re-install win7; then installing SP1. Good thing I don't trust windows products, I always save off my data and have app backups.
Anonymous
February 25, 2011
I haven't begun to install Windows 7 SP1 yet, but I wonder if it will work at all in my case: Hardware raid 1>

sda1: System Reserved
sda2: Windows 7
sda3: NTFS
extended: Ubuntu 10.10 I installed Windows prior to Ubuntu. During installation of Windows 7 I had to add the hardware raid pci card driver to be able to start installation. Joseph, does SP1 support this kind of setup? Apart from the issues mentioned above?

Anonymous
February 25, 2011
OK, finally I was able to install the service pack. I'm not really sure what was the reason on my system which caused the issue. Maybe it was the existence of an active WINRE-partition, which is, as far as I remember, some speciality of Fujitsu-computers. Also possible is that my assigning of drive letters with a third party tool caused the problem. Anyway, I fixed the problem by temporarily making the Windows-partition active. I avoided the "automount-method", because it seemed a bit strange for me, because I do not really understand what this autoumount would do on my system. Anyway. The whole thing looks for me like Microsoft is falling back in darkest times, when the company assumed being the one and only in the world and e.g. deleted whole hard-disks during windows installation , regardless if there is a linux there or what else before. Now Microsoft should very quickly notice that there are plenty of PCs out there in the world which are installed/maintened not only using Microsoft-tools. Finally I hope that Microsoft will fix this, in my opinion, very serious service-pack-installation issue as quickly as possible.
Anonymous
February 25, 2011
easy fix for this one. go to your diskmanager, at the system reserved partition put a drive letter on it. run the servicepack. reboot, remove the drive letter. all the thnx to grimson at this topic: social.technet.microsoft.com/.../d7e1de83-2285-4a29-abcf-a4fcf5f471d4 fixed :)
Anonymous
February 27, 2011
I had the issue on a Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bits computer. I have a dual-boot with Ubuntu using GRUB 2. But the GRUB - no using the Microsoft bootloader - was not the cause of the problem. My Fujitsu laptop come natively with a small (~ 150 MiB) partition storing the Windows boot files. As NapO commented above (25 Feb 2011 4:21 AM), I only had to assign a drive to that partition, install SP1, reboot and remove the drive letter. I could reproduce the error and the solution on another laptop. It is a shame that Microsoft didn't anticipate that error. Fujitsu is probably not the only manufacturer using that seperate boot partition technique... That sort of ridiculous problem will accelerate the movement toward the adoption of free OS like Ubuntu. Microsoft, you have to enhance your software quality if you want to keep your market...
Anonymous
February 27, 2011
I followed the instructions in joscon's 2/17 post and they work like a charm on computer using grub to dual boot Windows 7 Pro 32-bit and Ubuntu.
Anonymous
February 28, 2011
Enter in Disk manager and right Click and Active Windows 7 Partition. No Reboot necessary
Anonymous
February 28, 2011
i have a vaio F125 i did both disk management and diskpart steps then we i restarted the PC i get error "bootMGR is missing... " and i can't fix it ..... i used my recovery discs to fix it but it didn't get fixed.
Anonymous
March 01, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 01, 2011
I found an easy fix which works if you have your Linux/GRUB and Windows 7 on separate physical drives. Just go to the BIOS and change the boot order to put the Windows drive first. Install Win 7 Service Pack 1 and it should finish with no errors after it reboots itself. Then go back to the BIOS to select the Linux/GRUB drive as the first in the boot order so that you can continue to see GRUB upon a reboot.
Anonymous
March 02, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 02, 2011
Nope, just the internal single SSD drive is all it has. I've even tried mounting the FAT partition thinking that might have it confused but no luck.
Anonymous
March 03, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 03, 2011
Figured I'd pass along what finally fixed it for me. I had given up and was going to re-install so grabbed the Win7 disk and booted to it. On a whim I hit the repair system and it came back saying there were startup errors it could fix so I figured what the heck. Post the repair the service pack now installs without a hitch. So, one more thing to add to the lore of how to get around this issue.
Anonymous
March 03, 2011
Presumably, setting the system partition active acts as a proxy for "the location of the BCD system store". DISM has a switch that allows the system drive to be specified: /SysDriveDir:<path_to_sysdrive_directory> "Specifies the path to the location of the BootMgr files. This is necessary only when the BootMgr files are located on a partition other than the one containing the Windows directory and when the BootMgr files need to be serviced." technet.microsoft.com/.../dd744382(v=ws.10).aspx According to this post, that is the situation with the service pack - "...we need to be able to write information to the BCD store during install..." - and yet the same or equivalent switch is not available. Example use in the case that the system drive was not assigned a drive letter, and that drives unique name was determined by running the command 'mountvol': windows6.1-KB976932-X86.exe /sysdrivedir:?Volume{someGUID} Knowledge of the location of the system drive might have to be persistant through a reboot or two, but i would suppose that this could be cached somewhere, perhaps the state.ini file.
Anonymous
March 04, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 04, 2011
In my case, below is what I had and still got the same error. C:Windowssystem32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601 Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: OS-RESEARCH DISKPART> automount Automatic mounting of new volumes enabled. DISKPART> My configuration had no System Reserved partition, was a single, hybrid GPT/MBR drive, and used a third-party boot manager. I run a BSD-derived operating system with Windows 7 on the same drive. Setting my Windows partition to be marked as active is what solved the problem in my case. This can be done either with DISKPART or with a combination of the Disk Management snap-in in the Computer Management console, followed by install of SP1 and reboot, followed by DISKPART to remark the original partition active that was active before installation of SP1.
Anonymous
March 04, 2011
I have been getting the infamous 0800f0a12 error when trying to install service pack #1 and read this blog but none of the fixes seem to work for me. I have a system with a RAID set up as mirrored. I do not see a system partition in the disk manager window and the DISKPART idea did not work. I did have an extra drive installed that is for back up and I tried removing that but the error still persists. The mother board I am using is an ASUS P6T Deluxe and I am using the motherboards onboard raid with drivers from Asus and intel. I presume the issue is that the system cannot see the boot drive that is used before the raid drivers kick in to provide a mirrored virtual disk but I have never had any issue installing updates from Microsoft before with this setup which has been about a year. Even previous updates that required a reboot did not give me and error before. Does amyone have any ideas on what I could do to fix this? I have also heard that if you keeo your system updated, as I do, service pack 1 is not really required. Thanks Gary
Anonymous
March 05, 2011
my partition flag is pretty weird (maybe because of reformatting). on Disk Management, my D drive has 'system' flag instead of C drive (which has boot flag). after I mark D drive as active, then the installer ran with no problem.
Anonymous
March 07, 2011
I have tried everything suggested so far, SP1 still fails to install. As you can see from this Disk Manager screenshot i51.tinypic.com/2133ij8.jpg C: is marked Active,Boot,System etc The fault is CLEARLY with the SP1 installer.
Anonymous
March 08, 2011
Not sure if I did something wrong here, but here goes my exp. with SP1 installation (with Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot) ..

Got error 0x800f0a12 at initial try (3-4 times)
tried mountvol /E and DISKPART thingy, nothing, nada.
Changed 100 MB partition to active and retried and voila, it FINALLLLLLLY got installed.
rebooted, waited 10-15 mins for login screen to appear, got bored waiting and went for lunch.
Came back and woah, login screen is there (cool). Logged in, waited another 10-15 mins (too cool, in fact chilly) and finally I can start some work.
Tried changing back the original primary partition to primary, option is grayed out :(
Used third party tool to mark my ext3 partition and rebooted.
Got mountall failed :(
Rebooted in windows, checked from third party tool and found that all ext3 partition created in extended partition are wiped out :'(
Trying to use third party tool to undelete/recover my lost ext3 partitions. If that does not work will have to burn Ubuntu CD again and will have to do all the configuration, updates and tweaks again. SO much of trouble to install just a service pack???

Anonymous
March 09, 2011
I had the same problem which I resolved by changing the permissions on the bcd registry key to full for system and administrators. (HKLMBCD00000000). I note that after the update the permissions reverted to implicit deny. Hope this helps.
Anonymous
March 11, 2011
In my case I need to: ...boot/bootsect.exe /nt60 SYS /mbr /force
Anonymous
March 11, 2011
Still no job. Running Win7 validated Ultimate 32bit. Motherboard asus P5B-e. Single windows system - no dual boot. Tried diskpart /automount, device managementg- making the windows partition active, and assigning a device letter to the drive - all with no success. Using onboard Asus raid manager / with latest Asus/Intel driver etc. Raid configuration is to stripe (I'm looking for speed). System run unbelieveable well. I'm at the point of giving up right now.
Anonymous
March 13, 2011
I have this problem also. I have a laptop with win7, ubuntu 10.04 and meego. GRUB2 is used to select which OS to boot and it works great for that purpose. I propose that MS bootloader/disk partition teams go and talk with GRUB developers as soon as possible, so that this kind of problems can be avoided in the future. If that doesn't happen I must conclude that MS did this all on purpose and I need to avoid all MS software in the future as much as I can. Now I will try to fix my win7 SP1 installation with these instructions. If I don't succeed I will just remove win7 from this laptop and don't use it any more. There are only few windows only applications I need it for but I just need to learn live without those in the future.
Anonymous
March 14, 2011
JJ; The Technet article 'Understanding Disk Partitions' has a sub-subheading 'System Partition Requirements', which includes the following point:
Must be configured as the active partition. technet.microsoft.com/.../dd799232(v=ws.10).aspx The Win7 SP1 developers have simply proceeded on the basis that this guideline (and others, no doubt), is being adhered to. Anything else is a non-supported configuration. There is no conspiracy. Having said that - that a service pack install can commence without first checking that a fundamental and necessary system configuration like this is in affect, not inform the user of this fact and not give the user a runtime option to correct or workaround the problem is, IMO, somewhat farcical. There is a growing case for Microsoft to release an SP1a, with these sort of problems resolved.
Anonymous
March 15, 2011
I also had error 0x800f0a12. Unfortunately this blog post is badly indexed by Google. I fixed it mostly by myself by rebuilding the BCD. I have written the whole story on a Lenovo forum:forums.lenovo.com/.../385815 I would be happy to get some feedback about it. What is the right way? What was "wrong" on my system?
Anonymous
March 15, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 15, 2011
The first case makes sense, although i believe that's a departure from ntldr which would default to loading C:Windowssystem32ntoskrnl.exe if boot.ini can't be found, but that's not relevant here. In the second case, you mean that BCD has minor corruption - not enough to prevent bootmgr loading it but enough to prevent the SP from writing to it, and, in the case of Dolmen, enough to prevent 'bcdedit /enum' from working - correct? In that case, does BCD have to be rebuilt, or would this also work?: bcdedit /export %temp%BCD.backup bcdedit /import %temp%BCD.backup I'm still curious as to why the SP wants to write to BootBCD. Perhaps it updates the BCD template and and therefore wants to write to BCD to keep it consistent? Re the active partition - i'm trying to work out what would be the simplest method of determing what the active partition is from within Windows, without downloading anything. I realize there are Diskpart commands like this: > sel disk=system > sel part=1 > det part However that assumes you already know where the active parition is, else you might have to look around. What about this registry value: HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl /v FirmwareBootDevice Does the data give you the active partition, or just the location of bootmgr & BCD?
Anonymous
March 15, 2011
I'm running a Raid0 windows 7 Ultimate only. After trying diskpart and other things to automount added drive letter etc. - nothing worked. The system worked fine - except the update didnt run. Eventually I booted into recovery mode and ran the command bootrec /rebuildbcd. Update ran like a charm after than and I'm at SP1.
Anonymous
March 16, 2011
"Make sure that the Windows installation is the only active volume on your installation". I have dual-boot on my HD (with Fedora). It looked like the Fedora boot partition was the active one. When I right-clicked the SYSTEM entry and set "Mark Partition as Active", it then indicated both were active. The SP1 install then worked fine. After the requisite re-boot, only the SYSTEM partition is now active. A little confusing.
Anonymous
March 20, 2011
I also have a (actually USED to have a) dual boot system. I have Widows 7 on sda1&2 and an extended partition with SuSe 11.2. I followed the instructions above and was able to install Service Pack 1. When I switched the boot partition back to sda3 I got the GRUB screen back and was able to boot Linux. Unfortunately, when I booted windows it does something so that it becomes the boot partition and I don't get the GRUB menu any more. I can switch it back, but once windows boots it is the only thing that will boot. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks for the help
Anonymous
March 22, 2011
I think I know the answer, but wanted to ask anyway to see if there is a work around or fudge that I can use. I run a relatively small SSD as my boot drive, it's fast and efficient but usually runs at 50-70% utilisation. As such I regularly use the Disk Clean-up tool. What I didn't realise is that because I run with UAC disabled I automatically had the SP backup files included in my last clean-up run. I have been running the RC since it's launch and came to update to the RTM version yesterday. I noticed I needed to uninstall the RC first and to my surprise I was unable to do so thanks to my negligence in the prior clean-up. Is there anyway that I can install the RTM without uninstalling the old RC? Or is there any way that I can (without re-installing Windows) rebuild the backup from the original source media? I don't mind it being unsupported, I just want to avoid the hassle of a full reinstall just to get to the RTM version. If the installer has the ability to backup the files (after all it's only an elaborate script) then surely this could be replicated somehow using the original media and a bit of time and effort. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Anonymous
March 23, 2011
@joscon Many thanks for the reply. Does the RC expire? Basically I just want to know how long I can realistically put it off before I have to re-install. It's always such a pita =p
Anonymous
March 24, 2011
Thanks for the helpful advice. I have a Toshiba Portege R700 running Win7Pro, and could not understand for the life of me why SPI would not install. It has all gone through OK now, after doing the automount enable trick. A question: Do I now need to disable the automount again? Cheers
Anonymous
March 26, 2011
Hello Joseph! I want to install SP1 but i get error code 0x800f0a12 ..these are my info from Disk Management.. Volume Layout Type File System Status disk0 simple basic Healthy(Primary partition) disk1 (E:) simple basic ntfs Healthy(Primary partition) disk2 (C:) simple basic ntfs Healthy(Boot, Page file, Crash Dump,Primary partition) system reserved(H:) simple basic ntfs Healthy (System,Active,Primary partition) system reserved belongs to disk2 where i have installed windows 7 x64 disk0 includes 2 hard discs connected via raid0 where i have installed linux ubuntu 10.10 i did the steps that you suggested except from the winre step because i dont know how to do it and i get the same error ..Please give me a solution!!! :D
Anonymous
March 27, 2011
@joscon,I found the solution. I disconnected all hard disks from motherboard except from the one that is needed to boot windows, and the error is gone!:D Thanx a lot for the tip! i'll keep it in mind :)
Anonymous
March 31, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 04, 2011
Hi, I have the same problem on an LG-X130 Atom-based netbook; which uses SplashTop (branded LG SmartON) as a "fast" boot option, activated from a different ON-key. there are 4 partitions - 2 are marked "OEM Partiton" (1.5GB which i assume is the light OS, and 10GB which i presume is the recovery partition) and Disk Management can't do anything to them (only option is help), the windows partition (C: marked system, ACTIVE, ntfs, etc..) and another mostly blank D: ntfs partition. it is a single, 160GB HDD, windows 7 starter x86. automount doesn't work system is already marked active no additional storage is attached as a netbook there's no dvd-drive anyway, so only a Frankensteined win7 usb-key may work, if i can find out how to do it with a legal Starter Edition. buuuaah. i'm afraid to touch the BCD since i have no way of restoring the SmartON OS if it's fudged.
Anonymous
April 04, 2011
from DISKPART: Partition ### Type Size Offset partition 1 OEM 1536MB 1024KB partition 2 Primary 73GB 1537MB partition 3 Primary 64GB 74GB partition 4 OEM 10GB 139GB from Disk Management Volume Layout Type File System Status Simple Basic Healthy (OEM Partition) Simple Basic Healthy (OEM Partition) (C:) Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary partition) (D:) Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)
Anonymous
April 04, 2011
oh! BCDedit /enum fails with: "The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The configuration registry database is corrupt" now, how do i remedy this without killing the SmartON OS? and what's the best way to boot without a dvd drive and the correct Windows version dvd image?
Anonymous
April 04, 2011
i see. so that means the SmartOS probably WILL get f*cked if i rebuild the BCD (it works fine now), and there's fat chance anyone will be able to help me fix it since it's so esoteric. that's disappointing. anyway, to use WinRE i'll need to prepare a UFD. should i be worried about silly activation problems If the only windows image source i can use come from shady sources or are alternate versions (ie, not the installed Starter version, or a slipstreamed SP1 ver.? (LG doesn't include an original DVD since there's no optical drive anyway, instead relying on the recovery partition).
Anonymous
April 04, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 14, 2011
Assigning a drive letter to the System partition did the trick........ thanks!
Anonymous
May 04, 2011
Hi, Thank you Joseph, the first described method worked with me ;)
Anonymous
June 02, 2011
Do you have any advice for this issue? social.technet.microsoft.com/.../05c74dc1-a102-4cbd-9724-5c804f500a80 windows 7 doesn't boot if one hard disk taken from NAS is plugged via the sata cable directly to the main board. Thank you if any Cor
Anonymous
June 23, 2011
Joseph, So, this thread has a lot of discussion on how to work around the problem. Will Microsoft fix this problem in the future, or test service packs with dual boot systems? While it may be a minority, dual boot is certainly used by a lot of people. And moreover, why should it matter how things are partitioned for a service pack install anyway?
Anonymous
July 13, 2011
@ Joseph, It really worked for me thanks alot.
Anonymous
August 13, 2011
The thread is long but a big thanks to the guys who suggested the simplest solution for me. Gparted, find the boot sda# and change the flag to the ntfs one, then reverse once completed. Didn't take long once I found the right advice and burnt the CD. It's now in my collection of tools for the next time... many thanks again!
Anonymous
August 31, 2011
In my case I had no 100meg reserved partition. Just system partition. Using EasyBCD tool I examined the BCD and discovered an Unnamed Entry under the correct Server 2008 boot entry. I deleted the Unnamed Entry and SP1 installed successfully
Anonymous
November 11, 2011
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 11, 2011
So in conclusion, make sure you only have ONE active partition set, be it the one where winows is installed or the system recovery one.
Anonymous
December 12, 2011
Works great, but how do I reset it so that I can dual-boot again? Right now it just automatically starts Windows 7. Running OpenSuse as well.
Anonymous
October 02, 2012
salut j'ai Windows et Linux dans mon pc portable et sa me met cette erreur 0x800f0a12 que doit je faire ?
Anonymous
March 12, 2013
works for my Windows 2008 R2, thanks
Anonymous
March 15, 2013
Had the issue with the service pack failing. Confirmed the system partition was present and active. In DISKPART noted the system partition was offline. Set it to online and the service pack installed.
Anonymous
April 30, 2013
HI Joseph, I've followed all the recommended steps, and i still can't get my 2008 R2 to upgrade to SP1. I'm totally stumped here. What's next?
Anonymous
May 16, 2013
Joscon you're the best ! It works !
Anonymous
June 13, 2013
Thank you it's working very well I just follow your explaination (automount enable then reboot and voilà !)

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Windows 7/2008 R2 Service Pack 1 fails with 0x800f0a12

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