UEFI/UFI & Windows Boot Manager problem and OS partition problem secondarily
Why/what was the original issue?
I was just bringing up Cities:Skyline and stopped and I got a whitish dialog mentioning malloc/calloc/alloc (one of those) with 'gc' (garbage collector maybe?) and then things stuck and I think I had to hard drop after it set there for a while and I couldn't do much.
WBM / EUFI or EFI seem to be implicated, but the OS partition may need work after that (or concurrently).
Why not just reinstall?
Don't have my key - got the MSI Codex 9 R from the Amazon MSI shop. There is no visible key sticker and I'm told they can now live in the EUFI/UFI parts instead of just the firmware.
I've had a flood since 2022 and a lot of stuff (possibly including any paperwork for the Codex R 9) and even if I find it, I don't remember seeing an obvious key.
I'm hoping to get some stuff from the registry and salvage some important files on the OS partition.
Where am I now?
I've ended up with a situation that, if I pull the main drive out of my main machine and connect it by USB, I can access the partition for data. There are Recovery and EUFI/EFI partitions that I assume might still be okay.
However, when I tried to access the Win 10 Home 2H22 on my 2022 MSI Codex R desktop partition, first I just couldn't get in (meaning I could see the two images in the WBM screen, but I couldn't move my mouse to either), then it suggested a disk check and while I trying to guess the right choice, it went ahead and stopped about 30% in and I had to hard kill it.
After that, when I try to start things up, when it tries to enter the WBM, I get instead a blue screen.
So I think I have two issues to fix:
- First, somehow repair the ability to boot into the OS drive on that disk. (WBM + UEFI or EFI issues)
- Second, some way to attempt to fix the Windows OS without smoking all the keys and stuff that would live in the hive and to recover the data from users and so on. Ideally, return that machine back to function again.
I once upon a time knew about MBRs and the like, but the new UEFI/UFI and parts of the EUFI/EFI showing up on the disk (rather than living in firmware) are things I'm not versed in. I don't know what the best way to fix the WBM and the OS partition while saving ideally all the stuff in the OS partition.
Posted Jul 8, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC