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After interrupting a CHKDSK my Dell E5540 won't boot from the internal SSD and reports <windows root>\system32\hal.dll as missing.

I can boot from a Windows recovery USB and get to the command prompt to enter the Bitlocker recovery key and see that the OS drive appears fine and the dll is present.

I’ve tried all sorts of commands including bootrec to repair the boot records but I don’t really understand what I’m doing and I’m not succeeding. Much of what I’ve read seems to be aimed at Windows 10 installations with GPT, but I have Legacy Boot set in the BIOS and the disk doesn’t show as GPT when I run DISKPART.

If I boot from the recovery USB stick in legacy mode I can start Windows and log in, and all seems fine, but rebooting without the stick gives the same error.

bootrec /rebuildbcd gives "Requested system device cannot be found"

Can anyone help please? Attached a screenshot which hopefully helps. Thanks.

enter image description here

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    Try to Do a Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade.
    – harrymc
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 13:21
  • That may well be a root kit virus (has happened) or a hardware problem of some sort (less likely). Make sure your data is backed up because I think you will have to reinstall Windows. I think Windows must be running to do a Repair Install.
    – anon
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 13:30
  • Thanks for your suggestion. I'm pretty sure the problem was caused by me shutting the system down whilst a CHKDSK was running, rather than a virus or a hardware problem.
    – Prometheus
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 13:58
  • That would corrupt the file system so I am quite sure you will need to reinstall Windows and recover from backup
    – anon
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 14:06
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    Windows needs to be running to do a repair install. Try the suggestions in this article below to see if you can get a startup repair to work. Boot record issues may prevent this. windowscentral.com/…
    – anon
    Commented Feb 9, 2020 at 14:12

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I managed to fix this in the end. I changed the setting in the BIOS from legacy boot to UEFI and it sorted it out, still with MBR rather than GPT for the HDD (can't be bothered to change it). It caused some minor upset to Bilocker but that was quickly fixed.

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