Inspiron 3542 with Windows 8.1 not booting, tried BOOTREC commands with no luck

Hi all,

Recently, although I never made any software or hardware changes lately, I cannot boot into Windows 8.1 on my Inspiron 3542 laptop. Had this laptop since December 2014 and this is the  first major BSOD I've gotten with it.

I get a 0xc0000098 error message (I have attached the photo) saying that CLFS.sys, a required file, is missing or contains errors. I made a Windows 8.1 bootable USB downloading the software from Microsoft and then making the flash drive bootable using Rufus, and did the BOOTREC /RebuildBcd, /FixMBR, and /FixBoot commands several times through Command Prompt in the Recovery mode/console, with no luck. Any ideas on what I should try?

Also, I have backed up my C:\ drive onto a portable external hard drive, so that I can do a clean installation of Windows, if the need arises, but I do not have enough space on the C:\ drive, and would love to be able to access Recycle Bin and do more cleanup of my C:\ drive; is there any way I can do so in Recovery mode/console?

Thank you!