Windows 10 Pro 1809 - Unbootable post update yesterday
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I've been using Veracrypt for a long time without issue but as of this morning I'm unable to boot. I've encrypted my systems disk (C:) and created a backup of my recovery disk on an external disk that has since died. I do know my password.
As of today (the day after Microsoft Patch Tuesday) Windows 10 is now booting into attempt startup repair but it will never work cuz it can't see the system disk C:\ =( Is there way around this? Can I boot into Ubuntu, fire up Veracrypt and decrypt the system disk or is there a way to create a 'generic' bootable recovery medium like USB/DVD?
Thanks!
It is easy to recover from such issues is you know how to boot into
Linux since no decryption or rescue disk is required and it is just a
matter of manually restoring the VeraCrypt bootloader that certainly was
certainly erased by the 1809 upgrade.
First of all, can you please boot into Linux and use the "Disks"
application to mount the EFI system partition (the one with partition
type "EFI System") and then post the content of the folders "EFI/Boot",
"EFI/VeraCrypt" and "EFI/Microsoft/Boot" (for the last one I'm
interested in the files whose name start with "bootmg").
Depending on the folders content, I will give you the instructions that
will fix your problem.
Thanks Mounir but I"m all set. I booted into Clonezilla and did a disk image backup to external storage. Upon reboot I saw there was in option in UEFI to boot from the VeraCrypt boot loader. I choose it and then I booted into Windows without any issue, from there I decrypted the system disk and moved any sensitive files to an additional internal drive I just added to the machine and encrypted with Veracrypt. Turns out the recovery 'disk' was on a USB on my desk even though I didn't need it.
Everything is all good. =)
Any ideas why Microsoft would mess with the Veracrypt bootloader?
Glad to see that you recover from this issue.
I have no idea why the latest 1809 Upgrade causes such issue with
VeraCrypt although I implemented the ReflecDrivers mechanism documented
for such cases by Microsoft. It was working well with previous upgrades
so something special is happening with 1809.
Anyway, I'm trying to analyze this issue in order to see if I'm doing
something wrong in VeraCrypt or it is just a matter of buggy upgrade
process from the side of Windows.