Win7 boot manager raises error: winload.exe 0xc0000098 after Windows Update

Per Hansson

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Hi, I have a Win7 install that I had not used since January since I was testing Win10 (on a separate drive)
The Win7 install is a dual boot where XP x64 resides on a 300GB Cheetah drive connected to a RAID controller.
Since it's the boot drive it has the Win7 boot manager on it, including the C:\BOOT directory for Win7 and C:\NTLDR for XP x64
Win7 resides on a 4TB RAID5 array and shows up as drive D: when Windows has finished booting.

I booted it up for the first time since January, applied all 60 Windows updates and when I rebooted I was greeted with the error: winload.exe 0xc0000098 "File: \Windows\system32\winload.exe"
"Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt"
Pressing "F8" on the boot menu for Win7 just raised the same error message.

So I fired up my Win7 SP1 DVD and ran a chkdsk for both drives C: and D: but it did not fix anything.
Next I tried bootrec /ScanOs & /RebuildBcd but it found no missing entries.
So I tried /FixMbr & /FixBoot and rebooted but it made no difference.

Next I tried to run an offline sfc scan, but it could not continue due to pending operations.
So I renamed the file D:\Windows\WinSxS\Pending.xml and that allowed me to continue.
To be on the safe side I ran it in "verify mode": sfc /verifyonly /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\Windows
But it found no corrupted files.

Next I renamed the C:\BOOT\BCD file and created a new one using bootrec, but this also did not help.

Finally I replaced the D:\Windows\system32\winload.exe with a copy stored in D:\Windows\WinSxS\Backup and this did change the behavior:
Instead of 0xc0000098 I got error: 0xc0000428 "Info: Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file."
With the new winload.exe pressing "F8" actually worked and so I selected the option "disable driver signature enforcement" which then got me a little further in the boot process: now ntoskrnl.exe raised error 0xc0000098 instead.
But replacing that one with the backup in D:\Windows\WinSxS\Backup did not change the behavior at all, and this is where I'm at now :)
 
Sounds like one of the boot drives has failed. If you can get into the Control Panel while in the Safe mode, try changing the OS boot order in SYSTEM, Advanced System Settings, Settings
 
No that's not it, the lone Cheetah SAS drive just contains the boot manager, and the 3x4TB drives in the RAID5 array contains Win7, the drives work just fine.
I have other stuff on that array since it's my storage array, it's something that went wrong in the update.
I have a suspicion that this might be related to the problem in this KB article:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3033929
 
You in Sweden Per? My grandfather dropped one of the S's in our last name Hanson when he moved to San Francisco in 1889:) My first name is Kurt
 
No I've kind of put it aside, it's not a top priority anyway, running Win10 from my Intel 910 PCIe SSD anyway ;)
Was just curious to see if it got the update, and better to do it through there because this one is based on the insider previews which I've upgraded through, so it's only a valid Win10 license as long as I keep it on the insider preview update channel...
 
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