I’m in a causal loop of no boot safeboot boot loops

[thedrewnorth]

Quite a situation here. I moved myself recently from always a Mac, to giving PC a shot. Loved it until yesterday.

System was working fine. Decided to do my final piece of hardware install, adding an optane memory module, which has to be one of the poorest defined, explained, and implemented installation procedures I’ve ever seen, especially coming from intel.

Long story short, I decided it was no longer worth my time to mess with it, for the little gain I’d be getting. So I moved on. I mention this because I have a suspicion the failed install may be a factor.

So, as I decided to move on, I installed Duet Display. Upon restarting my computer, I reached a system services exception BSOD. Windows cannot repair itself.

Boots in safe mode with networking. Functions fine in safe mode.

So I track down the srttrail log and it appears as a mangled mess, can’t tell anything from it.

I remove duet Display and Kairos Display driver. Hoping that should give me the solution and i will be fine upon reboot. Nope, same thing. I use revo to expansively search for files/drivers left behind. Delete those. Same problem.

I enable boot logging in hopes to find a cause. Bootres.dll is corrupted. I can’t find a fix for this yet.

Anyway, on to the causal loop. I don’t understand what kind of messed up system Microsoft has designed in Windows, but this is just pure nonsense.

A) option 1 - Windows boots in safe mode. But there is no system or process to enable systematically shutting down services or drivers to find the cause. It must be simple, if it still boots and has networking functionality, it is likely fixing this corrupt .dll. But there is no way to do so, so far. One would think that since I can locate the .dll that is corrupt, I should be able to replace it with a non-corrupt version. System says I don’t have the privelages to do so.

So given Windows has failed to repair itself, I can’t repair It myself, i go to the next absurd method. A true causal loop.

B) option 2 -repair Windows. Should be easy, right? Two ways to repair windows while keeping files, prefs, and apps in tact. An in-place reinstall. Can’t do it.

-use recovery media, boot to installer, Windows won’t allow me to do an in place install from recovery. Says it must be done from Windows. How does that make sense if someone can’t boot into Windows?

-well, I can boot into Windows in safe mode. I try that. Nope. Windows can’t be installed in safe mode.

-so the two options given for repairing the install without starting clean, neither are an option.

All of this for one corrupted .dll!?!?

Step 3
I didn’t want to recover my Acronis disk image, because I’d lose about 8 hours spent on software installations and customizations that day. I have a backup from the previous day. But, since I have no apparent alternative I decided to suck it up and just recover from the backup. Acronis is a proprietary disk image .tib.

Loaded Acronis, it tells me Acronis has an error and needs to be re-installed. So I download the installer. It has to be uninstalled first, and then reinstalled. I uninstall it. Go to reinstall it, and now Acronis says it can’t install in safe mode.

This is absolutely unbelievable. I don’t get how these restrictions exist when either cause and b and effect a and b, are contingent upon each other. A1 doesn’t work do B1, B1 in contingent upon b2, but a2 won’t let b2 work.

So it seems I’m out of luck.

Any ideas here?

System
Windows 10 - newest release
i7 8086k
Asus z370 motherboard
64gb gskill RAM
480gb optane 900p sys drive pcie bus
Optane m10 m.2 slot 1
1tb WD Black NVME m.2 slot 2
WD Black NVME RAID0 on pcie
4tb Samsung Evo SATA Raid 5
6tb seagate hdd

All drives and raid disconnected except for system drive and 6tb seagate, where I currently have my .tib Acronis Backup.

Please help
Me!

 

[Colif]

What was the 2nd optane set up to do? I assume ram since you already booting off an optane drive. You sure have enough storage devices there.

try removing the optane you just installed and see if system still throws errors at you. If it was working fine before, it should again after?

a) The process you describe that loads windows in a reduced state does exist, its called a clean boot. you should be able to set that up from safe mode by looking here - just be careful not to disable all MIcrosoft services or it won't have a chance to boot right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

b) as you can get to safe mode, you can try this
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, carefully type this command into same window (spacing has to match or it won't work):
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

c) Have you tried making a bootable Acronis USB? https://kb.acronis.com/content/1526

 

[thedrewnorth]

Thanks so much for the tips.

The Optane 900p is my OS Drive. The Optane M10 is is the accelerator for the internal 6tb hdd. I never could get the optane m10 to initialize properly, so I took it out of the equation. I'm just sending it back. It's caused too much hassle for the rare usage, and small pickup that I would receive from it.

I went through the steps of the option B). It got me a clean bill of health, but when I rebuilt the boot configuration, it rebuilt the EFI with the corrupted .dll. I then tried to take the EFI from a clean install, and it just wasn't working.

Step 3 was a great suggestion. I downloaded Acronis on a separate PC, created the recovery disk. Two problems with this: When I go to use the recovery, even though i created it with my authorized install, it says its running it trial mode, so it has limited functionality (evidently a known issue)

Then, I figured i'd just go the long way and reimage a spare ssd from another computer, from my acronis backup. That proved to be the nail in the coffin. The Acronis backup is corrupted. Go figure.

All in all, i had too much time wasted, and couldn't afford to waste anymore. So, I executed a clean install, reinstalled everything core to getting stuff done.

Acronis tech support couldnt help me in time, although they were good. I signed up for the pro premium membership, or whatever it's called. Big waste of $150. I will be asking for my money back there, and looking for another backup solution. I usually have redundant backups, plus a redundant clone, but since this was my first Windows endeavour, i had only had the chance to create one backup thus far. Lesson learned.

 

[Colif]

Hi guys ! issue FIXED!

For those who face the same issue (unable to boot windows 10 with "C:\windows\System32\LogFiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt" showing "C:\efi\microsoft\boot\resources\custom\bootres.dll is corrupted)", here's what I did

First you need to create a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows 10
Insert the flash drive in your PC and reboot from it
Select Repair your computer
Select Troubleshoot
Choose Command Prompt

Type in the command:
Diskpart

Type in the command:
List disk (you have to note which disk is your boot drive number)

Type in the command:
Sel disk 0 (0 is my boot drive number)

Type in the command:
List vol (you have to note which volume is the EFI partition)

Type in the command:
Sel vol 4 (volume 4 is my EFI partition)

Type in the command:
assign letter=V:

Type in the command:
Exit

Now you can format the EFI partition:
format V: /FS:FAT32

After the format you need to recreate the EFI directory structure

Type in the command:
bcdboot C:\windows /s V: /f UEFI (C is your system partition)

Exit the command prompt and reboot the PC

Please let me know if it worked for you
Thanks
Jeff

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/how-to-fix-bootresdll-is-corrupt-in-windows-10/8c70abfb-91a1-4693-ad6e-73c00b45697b