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September 21st, 2015 19:00
Dell XPS 8700 boot and recovery failures
The system is 2 years old. No recovery images were ever created.
Here are the original symptoms.
1. Can't boot into Windows 8.1 on Dell XPS 8700.
2. OS Refresh fails.
3. OS Restore points fail.
4. OS Automatic repair fails.
5. Restart Options fail (i.e. Safe Mode, Boot debugging mode).
6. Command Prompt fails (can't find any administrator accounts).
This has been done to date:
Created a bootable flash drive. After changing the BIOS setting to boot up using the USB flash drive first, the PC booted up successfully. I was then able to get to the command prompt and backup the user data files.
I then went back into the BIOS and changed the boot order back for the internal HDD. I rebooted and ultimately started a PC Reset (Factory restore). After the reset process reached 4%, I received a message that the reset failed. A subsequent restart then gave me a BCD File error message 0xc000000d "The BCD File is missing information". The following restart yielded, as I can best recall, "No boot partitions found on the internal HDDs". And, I could no longer see the UEFI firmware menu, just the BIOS (A06). After changing the boot order and booting up on the flash drive, I could see that many files apparently had been marked for deletion on the C: drive as the User profiles were not shown. At one point, the flash drive had become the C: drive and the HDD was X:. But that later cleared up. After getting the C: prompt for the HDD I issued the following commands Bootrec /fixmbr, Bootrec /fixboot, Bootrec scanos and Bootrec rebuildbcd. After trying to once again boot up on the internal HDD, I got a different variant of the BCD File error, 0xc00000098 "The BCD File doesn't contain valid info for the OS".
Any chance of recovery from this situation? Otherwise, I guess we'll have to get a replacement drive (i.e. SSD) and a copy of Windows 10. Thanks.
osprey4
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34.2K Posts
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September 22nd, 2015 16:00
Hi 2Tallinva,
Yes, it sounds like a hard drive failure. You can try this site to request a Windows 8.1 disc. Obviously a free upgrade to Win 10 is better than paying for an OS you're already entitled to.
2TallinVA
2 Posts
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September 22nd, 2015 21:00
Hello Osprey4:
Thank you very much for the very informative reply. It just struck me as being odd that the 1TB HDD had failed only after 2 years of use by a retired couple who are not heavy users. Their home has very little dust and excellent year-round climate control. Nonetheless, I contacted Customer Service and a courtesy copy of Windows 8.1 will be sent to the address on file. I also ordered a Crucial MX200 500GB SSD as they had only acquired about 10GB of user data over the course of the past 12 years. Much of the data had been transferred from their previous Dell Dimension 8200.
Thank you again for confirming my reluctant suspicion about the hard drive and saving them the cost of a copy of Windows 10. Very much appreciated.