Hello, today after doing a restart and install updates, my pc won't boot at all...not even in safe mode. I am getting the error at start up:

fatal error c00000D4 applying update operation xxxx of yyyyyy (directdb.dll)

I tried renaming the pending.xml file as per this other similar solution, to no avail...in that case, the pc would just hang at the DELL startup screen until it went to sleep.

I ran chkdsk against the windows volume and all was ok.

I tried to run system restore but it said there were no restore points, despite the fact that I know I recently created one.

It seems the issue is with the update process itself. So I was hoping the renaming of the pending.xml would get it to bypass attempting to install updates at boot. Is there some other way to make it not attempt to install updates?

I really don't want to have to re-install  windows and then have to reinstall all my apps (even though they won't be touched as they are on a separate drive, the registry won't know about them after I reinstall windows)...and its a development machine, so it took a lot of apps and install to get it where it is operational (Visual Studio, SQL Server, IIS), etc....

Some background:

Not sure if this is relevant or not...but just thought I'd try to paint the landscape... A few weeks ago, I migrated my windows installation from my hard disk to an SSD. I left the program files and data files on the standard hard disk and created junctions on the SSD to point program files and users/me/documents to the hard disk location. All has been working fine and I even thought that I had done a windows update since then too.

I can still boot into the original windows installation on the standard hard disk, if that is of any help to be able to do something from

Hi chadwixk,

Since clone software frequently cause system corruption and this kind of issues which is not fixable, we only recommend performing a clean install for system installation on new hard disk.

If you really dont want to reinstall your windows, please try system repair by using installation media first, if this issue is caused by boot folder, it should be helpful.

As a workaround, you could boot into your old hard disk, create a full system image backup on local network. Then migrate whole windows image to SSD from that, system corruption might occurs but it will help you avoid re-install. Remember to run dism/online/cleanup-image/restorehealth and backup personal file before Windows update, if same issue happen again, you might need a clean install for SSD.

Regards

D. Wu

Hi chadwixk,

Since clone software frequently cause system corruption and this kind of issues which is not fixable, we only recommend performing a clean install for system installation on new hard disk.

If you really dont want to reinstall your windows, please try system repair by using installation media first, if this issue is caused by boot folder, it should be helpful.

As a workaround, you could boot into your old hard disk, create a full system image backup on local network. Then migrate whole windows image to SSD from that, system corruption might occurs but it will help you avoid re-install. Remember to run dism/online/cleanup-image/restorehealth and backup personal file before Windows update, if same issue happen again, you might need a clean install for SSD.

Regards

D. Wu

• Marked as answer by chadwixk 3 hours 56 minutes ago

Thanks for your response D. Wu. I was able to get around it for now by deleting portions of the pending.xml file. I tried using the dism/online/cleanup-image/restorehealth process, but I keep getting

Error: 0x800f0906 The source files could not be downloaded.

I've tried several fixes, to not avail....so it looks like I may have to bite the bullet and do a fresh install on the SSD. Is there anyway of avoiding having to re-install all my applications? They are on a separate drive...but I'm guessing the issue will be all the related registry entries for these apps that won't be there in the registry of the fresh install right? There is probably not a clean way to import the registry entries from the original registry to the fresh one...there are probably thousands of entries and you'd have to work through each one...

Hi Chad,

For new hard disk, clean install always is the best option, as I mentioned that if you still could boot into the original windows installation on the standard hard disk, you could make a system image to your SSD, however, still will lose recent programs and we could not make sure the system corruption could be fixable.

We suggest you perform a fresh install on your new hard disk:)

Regards

D. Wu

Understood D. Thanks for your help!