While following ChatGPT's Tech Support Advisor's instructions to fix a Windows 8.1 VM running on VirtualBox, it had me try to manually fix the boot files on my virtual drive.
First it had me assign the S letter to the System Reserved partition for whatever reason, then I ran into the following as I entered the commands it told me to:
X:\Sources>ren S:\Boot\BCD BCD.bakThe system cannot find the file specified.That's it telling me to back up the BCD, right? So Windows reports that S:\Boot\BCD doesn't exist, and I move on to the next command as instructed when BCD is missing:
X:\Sources>bcdedit /createstore S:\Boot\BCDThe store creation operation has failed.Cannot create a file when that file already exists.... So does the BCD exist or not?
Ultimately my main goal is obviously getting Windows to boot again (so I don't have to do the hours of Group B updates one by one again). I'm 90% sure this error came about when I fsck'd my Ubuntu to get it to boot about a year ago, and I've yet to get back into my Windows VM since. Here's the full conversation between us in case it helps:
https://chatgpt.com/share/c9e22b52-3944-41d7-a793-9761dec9b00a
If I'm not mistaken, it seems like ChatGPT was trying to guide me through a mix of this asker's attempts to fix the same issue as well as the top answer's suggestions:
Windows 8.1 Repair Loop Won't Recognize Win Install or Fix BCD
Added the SMART data for the NVMe drive in question after Ramhound stated the drive may be failing:
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSEDSMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)Critical Warning: 0x00Temperature: 47 CelsiusAvailable Spare: 100%Available Spare Threshold: 5%Percentage Used: 4%Data Units Read: 9,859,927 [5.04 TB]Data Units Written: 16,673,644 [8.53 TB]Host Read Commands: 97,689,854Host Write Commands: 172,173,688Controller Busy Time: 696Power Cycles: 1,055Power On Hours: 6,065Unsafe Shutdowns: 208Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0Error Information Log Entries: 1,365Warning Comp. Temperature Time: 0Critical Comp. Temperature Time: 0Temperature Sensor 1: 47 CelsiusTemperature Sensor 2: 55 CelsiusTemperature Sensor 8: 47 CelsiusError Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 16 entries)Num ErrCount SQId CmdId Status PELoc LBA NSID VS 0 1365 0 0xb00c 0x4005 0x028 0 0 -