Symptoms

  • A blue recovery screen: “Your PC needs to be repaired … Error code: 0xc000000f.”
  • The PC boots to the BIOS or a “no bootable device” message intermittently.
  • It started after a power loss, cloning the drive, or a failed update.

What causes 0xc000000f

  • The BCD store is missing or corrupt.
  • The boot order in UEFI/BIOS points to the wrong drive.
  • The EFI system partition was damaged or not copied during a clone/migration.
  • Early signs of a failing system drive.

How to fix it

  1. Boot from Windows installation or recovery media → Repair your computer → Troubleshoot → Command Prompt.
  2. Rebuild the boot files with bootrec (command below), accepting when it asks to add the installation to the boot list.
  3. In UEFI/BIOS, set the correct Windows drive as the first boot device, save and restart.

Terminal / CLI command

bootrec /fixmbr && bootrec /fixboot && bootrec /scanos && bootrec /rebuildbcd

If “bootrec /fixboot” returns Access Denied on a UEFI system, run: bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI (S: = the EFI partition you assign with diskpart).

How to confirm the fix: The PC boots straight into Windows with no recovery screen across several restarts.

Prevent it from coming back

Use a UPS to avoid power-loss corruption, and when cloning a drive make sure the EFI system partition is included.