Problem: While starting, Windows 2008 R2 shows a blue screen and the inaccessible
boot device message or the error 0x0000007B in a BSOD.
Resolution: for any reason Windows marked the System Reserved partition as active
and assigned a letter. Because of that, Windows is trying to boot from the
incorrect partition and the BSOD message is shown. To solve this:
- boot from the Windows DVD, select the language of the keyboard in the first screen and then choose the repair Windows installation from the lower left side of the screen.
- It doesn’t matter if the setup program detects your windows installation in the wrong letter. Select it and then choose the command prompt tool from the recovery options available
- In the command prompt type:
- diskpart
- list disk. (make note
of the OS disk, for example 0)
- select disk 0
- list vol (shows the
volumes in the disk). You should see there that SYSTEM RESERVED is
assigned the C letter and your Windows partition other (for example D as
the example below:
Volume
Ltr Label Fs
Type
----------
--- ----------- -----
----------
Volume 0
F DVD-ROM
Volume 1
D System Rese NTFS
Partition
Volume 2
C NTFS Partition
- select volume 1
- remove letter=d
- exit
Using diskpart make sure the C partition is marked
as active.
After rebooting, boot again from the DVD, choose
repair installation and notice that the setup program now detects your windows
installation with the letter C.
You can then run from a command prompt Bootrec
/rebuildbcd to rebuild the bcd store and then you can access the startup repair
option by running “x:\sources\recovery\StartRep.exe”.
Finally, in the next boot it is possible that a new
BSOD is shown. In my particular case, after reboot from that BSOD Windows show
me the menu with the recovery options shown when you press F8; choosing Last
Good Known configuration finally started the server.
