Yes I should of made a backup, that was very bad of me.
Last night I was attempting to update my PC. The option I clicked was "Restart and Update" (Not exact wording). There was no "Update and Shutdown" option. The update was proceeding normally. There was a message saying it would restart several times during the update. On the first restart I get the message:
Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key
Pressing a key does nothing but bring up the message again.
I created a Windows 10 Install Device on a USB flash drive. I'm able to boot into that. Here are the following things I have tried:
- Under "Repair Your computer" > Troubleshoot > Advance options
- Startup Repair - Fails and prints "Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC"
- System Restore - None available
- System Image Recovery - None available
- Uninstall latest quality update - Message saying "We ran into a problem and won't be able to uninstall the latest quality update of Windows."
- Uninstall latest feature update - Message saying "We ran into a problem and won't be able to uninstall the latest feature update of Windows."
- Under "Repair Your Computer" > Troubleshoot > Command Prompt
- Ran
bootrec /scanos
- Finds 2 installations.[1] C:\Windows.old\WINDOWS
and[2] C:\Windows
- Ran
bootrec /rebuildbcd
- FoundC:\Windows.old\WINDOWS
andC:\Windows
and prints the error "The requested system device cannot be found". - Ran
bootrec /fixmbr
- Runs. Prints "The operation completed successfully." - Ran
bootrec /fixboot
- Fails. Prints "Access is denied."
- Ran
I then attempted the method described here https://www.thewindowsclub.com/fix-bootrec-fixboot-access-is-denied-error-on-windows-10/ but that had no effect.
I then kinda gave up and attempted to reinstall Windows 10:
- Select "Windows 10 Home"
- Select "Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)
- See the following:
- Drive 0 Partition 1: Recovery (450.0 MB) Type: Recovery
- Drive 0 Partition 2 (830.0 MB) Type: Recovery
- Drive 0 Partition 3 (99.0 MB) Type: System
- Drive 0 Partition 4 (930.2 GB) Type: Primary
- I'm unable to instal Widows from here. The error at the bottom says "Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition #. (Show details)
- The error if I select partition 4 reads: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
Questions:
- Is there any way to recover from this without formatting my drive?
- What is the best way to recover my data from my drive before I reinstall from scratch if that is what I have to do?
- What could of caused such a horrible failure?
Edit 1: This is a custom build Desktop PC. Main drive is a Samsung M.2 SSD.