Windows 8 Boot Issues/Product Key

jmu303

Honorable
Aug 2, 2013
4
0
10,510
Hello everyone,

I just recently purchased an Acer Aspire V7 laptop along with a 512GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro. Upon receiving my laptop I used macrium reflect to clone the disk, and replaced the HDD with the SSD. I also removed the mSATA Cache in my laptop (I don't know if that was a bad thing). However, upon booting, I'm getting the error:

The Boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
File:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f

Acer didn't ship any recovery media or anything-there's just a recovery partition on the HDD/SSD. I've been working a bit on attempting to solve this problem, and people are recommending booting into advanced startup options and using bootrec, but I can't figure out how to get into advanced startup options. Once I boot, the acer logo flashes instantaneously and then I'm instantly given the blue boot error screen with the option to press "ESC" to enter BIOS.

I'd appreciate any assistance in this matter. First, is there any way around this problem? Second, is there any way to find my Windows 8 Product Key? I'm thinking about just doing a simple clean install of Windows which will solve all my problems, but I obviously need the Windows 8 Product Key for my Acer which isn't on a sticker or anywhere physically on the laptop. I know there are product key finder programs, but currently, my Windows 8 isn't functional. I can examine the contents of my SSD by plugging it into an external drive bay and into another computer, but I don't know where I could find this product key.

Thanks a lot for your help everyone!

Edit: Sorry, double post, disregard, I can't figure out how to delete this thread.
 

jmu303

Honorable
Aug 2, 2013
4
0
10,510
It's all pretty confusing. I have no idea what the mSATA drive is (24GB Kingston) or what it's used for or whether it's essential to the boot process. However, I have tried plugging the mSATA Cache back in and replacing the SSD with the original (supposedly) untouched 1TB HDD and reloaded the default BIOS settings. The same error occurs.