The dreaded 0xc0000225 Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) error has appeared on your computer. This particular error completely prevents you from booting up your device. It doesn’t have to be the end, however.
Before you hold up a white flag and invest in a new computer, there are ways to troubleshoot your computer and fix the 0xc0000225 error.
What Is Error Code 0xc0000225?
But first, what is this error code? Error code 0xc0000225 is a permanent error (unless you troubleshoot and repair the problem.) This error means that your computer either has a missing or corrupt configuration, a malware or virus that is damaging the system’s files, or a defect in the hardware.
Since your computer is unable to recover appropriately, it will preserve itself by shutting down or preventing you from being able to boot it up.
What Will You See If You Have the Error?
If you have the 0xc0000225 BSoD error, your computer screen will likely display something similar to the following bodies of text:
- “Your PC needs to be repaired. Error code: 0xc0000225”
- “Recovery – Your PC needs to be repaired. A required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed. Error code: 0xc0000225”
- “The application or operating system couldn’t be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors: File: \windows\system32\winload.efi. Error code: 0xc0000225”
- “The operating system couldn’t be loaded because the digital signature of a file couldn’t be verified. Error code: 0xc0000225”
At other times, there will simply be a blue screen that has dots spinning in circle. All of these are indicative of the 0xc0000225 BSoD error.
When and Why Does BSoD Happen?
There are many reasons why your computer may be giving you the 0xc0000225 BSoD error:
- Your computer shut off while it was performing a Windows Update.
If your computer loses power, or if you force a shutdown while it is still updating, this can cause corruption or missing configurations that give you the BSoD error. - You recently upgraded your Windows from Windows 7 or 8/8.1 to Windows 10.
Older computers that are being upgraded may be more susceptible to bugs and incompatibility issues that cause configuration problems. - A virus or malware attacked the system files.
Viruses can cause a number of problems on a computer, one of which being the BSoD. Viruses and malware have the potential to damage programs, steal your information, delete files, and completely reformat or clear a hard drive. - You cloned, added, or resized the partition or operating system.
Alterations of any kind to the operating system or partition, a part of the storage device of your computer, can cause your computer’s system to be incompatible. - An unsigned driver was installed to your computer.
Unsigned drivers are drivers that don’t contain a digital signature for easy identification and verification.
Though there can be other reasons behind your computer’s 0xc0000225 BSoD error, these are the most common. This is because each one can potentially jeopardize the state of your computer’s configuration, disks, or hard drive.
Before You Begin to Troubleshoot
Though the 0xc0000225 error code may seem like the end of the line for your computer, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, there are steps that you can take that can successfully fix the issue.
In order to get started troubleshooting, you will need to do a few steps beforehand.
Create a Windows 10 Installation Media Disk
Since you won’t be able to troubleshoot your computer in Windows itself, you can’t boot it up. Thus, you will need to use a Windows 10 installation disk.
If you don’t already have one, then you will need to create a Windows 10 installation disk. This will allow you to access and run the necessary repair tools. Here’s how:
- First, make sure you have a USB flash drive on hand. It will need a minimum of 8GB of storage space on it. Use a flash drive that is either empty or has unnecessary content on it, as the Windows 10 disk will remove anything stored on the flash drive.
- After acquiring the flash drive, plug it into an external computer that has Windows 10 on it to install the Windows 10 installation media.
- Next, select or download Windows Media Creation Tool on the external device. Follow the instructions by choosing the correct information for your particular computer.
- Then, install the Windows 10 installation media onto the USB drive.
- Once complete, put the flash drive into your faulty computer, and go to the boot menu to load the Windows 10 media disk.
Start Your Computer in Safe Mode
After you have created the installation disk and inserted it into your computer, you can then start your computer in Safe Mode.
This will make your troubleshooting process easier, as Windows 10’s Safe Mode loads the bare minimum systems, drivers, and services necessary for your computer to run.
Access your computer’s Safe Mode by following these four steps:
- Press down your computer’s power button until it shuts off entirely.
- Continue to restart your computer (around 2-3 restarts), until the “Preparing Automatic Repair” screen appears.
- Then, select the following options: Advanced Options-> Troubleshoot-> Advanced Options-> Startup Settings-> Restart.
- From there, your computer will once again restart, only this time you will be given the option to boot in a few different Safe Mode settings.
Once in Safe Mode, you will be able to perform a number of useful functions that might get rid of the dreaded blue screen, some of which we will review below:
- Scan for viruses and malware and attempt to remove them
- Uninstall potentially faulty software
- Remove files that are causing the blue screen
- Update or install the CD/DVD/USB hardware driver
How to Fix the 0xc0000225 BSoD Error
Without further ado, let’s look at the different types of issues that may be causing your computer to show the BSoD so that you can get back to using your computer as necessary.
Windows Automatic Repair
One of the first things you want to use to troubleshoot is Windows Automatic Repair. As it’s already built into your Windows 10, here is how to access and troubleshoot using the Windows 10 Automatic Repair:
- Once you’ve booted up using the Windows 10 install disk, the “Windows Setup” screen should appear. Select the correct language and then press the “Next” button.
- Then, you will see an “Install Now” screen. Select “Repair Your Computer”.
- This will take you back to the same screen we followed in accessing the Safe Mode. Simply select Troubleshoot-> Advanced Options-> StartUp/Automatic Repair.
- Reboot your computer to see if the issues were resolved.
Scan Disk Performance by Running the System File Checker Command
If your computer is still showing the 0xc0000225 BSoD error after trying the automatic repair, then it’s time to use specific commands to try to troubleshoot the issue. System File Checker (SFC) can be used to scan and restore corrupt files in Windows 10.
The best part is that the SFC utility is on all Windows Operating Systems. It can be found in the C:\Windows\System32 folder. Let’s go through the steps for accessing and troubleshooting using the SFC command.
- Go back to the Advanced Options menu that you went to in the Automatic Repair attempt.
- Instead of choosing Automatic Repair, select “Command Prompt”. This will open up the interface for inputting commands.
- Run the SFC command, which is: sfc /scannow
- Then, run a Disk Check scan by using the command: chkdsk c: /r /f
- The tool will look for corruptions in your hard drive and attempt to fix them if any is found.
- Reboot to determine whether or not this fixes your computer.
Note: If you run into an SFC /Scannow error when starting the scan, don’t worry. We have written dedicated articles on what to do if SFC scannow is not working, including:
- Windows Resource Protection Could Not Perform The Requested Operation
- Windows resource protection could not start the repair service
Try Rebuilding the BCD
The BCD, also known as the Boot Configuration Data, is a database file that contains information on how to start your Windows 10 computer.
To troubleshoot the BCD, you will need to rebuild the file to see if there is corruption in its configuration mechanism. Here’s how:
- Once again, start up your computer via the Windows 10 installation disk and go to the Advanced Options menu.
- From there, you will choose the Command Prompt, like you did with the SCF checker command.
- Then, run each of the below commands individually:
- bootrec /scanos
- bootrec /fixmbr
- bootrec /fixboot
- bootrec /rebuildbcd
Reboot your computer to see if this solution is the one that successfully gets rid of the BSoD.
Use System Restore
If none of the above solutions works, then you will likely need to use the System Restore feature to recover previous installation points. This is especially useful to try if your problem recently occurred, as that could mean that a corrupt file is causing the BSoD error.
To solve this issue, simply:
- Reboot from the Windows 10 install media disk.
- Go to Advanced Options-> System Restore.
- Select one of the most recent restoration times for Windows to restore to. This will not interfere with any personal files you may have.
- Then, reboot to see if the 0xc0000225 BSoD error is still present.
What If My Computer Is Still Showing the Error?
If none of the above troubleshoots successfully gets rid of the BSoD, then it might be time to replace the hard drive. If in doubt, contact a professional computer repair person to perform the necessary steps to fix your Windows 10 computer.
