The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again.

Hi Paul,

Did you try booting from Windows 8 Installation media?

This issue may occur due to any third party hardware or software conflicts that might corrupted any system files.

If you are unable to boot from the Windows 8 installation media to perform automatic repair, refresh, system restore, etc, let’s try the following steps to run an offline Check disk scan and check.

Important: While performing chkdsk on the hard drive if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive when chkdsk tries to repair that sector if any data available on that might be lost.
a. Copy all the files from your downloaded ISO or Windows 8 installation disc to a USB stick.
b. Boot from that USB stick and press Shift+F10 when Windows 8 setup WinPE shell starts.
c. In the command prompt type:

x:\>chkdsk /f /v /r /b /offlinescanandfix c:

NOTE: Make sure c: is your boot drive with your Operating System by running.

Hope the information helps. Let us know if you need further assistance with Windows related issues. We will be happy to help.

I already factory reset my system.

The problem appears to be with the use of caching technology (Intel Rapid Storage accelerator). If you are familiar with this, you will know that some of the files required to boot Windows are run from the SSD portion of the HyBrid Drive. If this technology has been enabled, it appears that none of MS's repair strategies work.

If you get to a command prompt, the main drive is x:\ The partition containing Windows can't be found by any of the restore methods. Also only a limited amount of commands can be run from the DOS prompt.

My understanding is that an expert could manipulate the boot manager and effect a recovery but I didn't manage to accomplish this.

If there are instructions on MS support, please point me to the location. 

Also, I would like to ask whether MS is working on a solution for this. It should be possible for the recovery program to diagnose whether Hybrid caching is enabled and make changes to the boot config files. I believe these hybrids drives are quite popular.

Hi Paul,

This issue might occur if the drive communication mode is set as AHCI on the Windows 8 computer whereas the drive is connected in IDE mode.

I would suggest you to check if the drive communication mode is setup as IDE under BIOS. You can refer to the manual provided by the computer’s manufacturer too check how to do and change if required.

Note: Modifying BIOS/ complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of BIOS/CMOS settings can be solved. Modifications of the settings are at your own risk.

For further reference, refer to the link and follow the suggestions from phanlon7 posted on October 12th, 2013:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-system/windows-crash-refresh-hard-drive-locked-unlock/a6bb04ff-5dba-4e10-a849-644cd0851bc6

Hi Pinaki,

I read your thread reference. I had attempted:

Bootrec /fixMBR

bootrec /fixBoot

bootrec /rebuildBCD

The second command did not execute though.

My BIOS is set to UEFI

As mentioned, in my particular case,  it was not possible to repair Windows 8. Methods attempted were:

• F8/Shift-F8 (from memory Shift-F8 brought up an invalid drive message)
• Restore from USB recovery drive
• Repair from manufacturer recovery partition
• Repair via Windows 8 install disk

I believe all the above failed because of Intel's acceleration (rapid storage program in Win 8) of the SSD/Hybrid partition. Windows recovery appears not to be able to find Drive c: and thus a version of Windows to repair. I can boot to DOS with the recovery partition or the Windows install disk but the prompt shows Drive x: and typing "c:" doesn't work. Only limited dos commands are available. The only solution is to factory restore the laptop and a day's worth of configuring to get back to the previous state (which I have now done 3 times).

Turning off acceleration would allow for a repair but that's a moot point as you have to have access to Windows to turn off acceleration in the first place. One could permanently turn off SSD caching in case of a future problem but then why even have the SSD/Hybrid drive.

I think MS needs to address a repair solution for SSD/Hybrid drives with caching - it's probably a common configuration.

Here's another with the same issue. 

Hi,

Sorry for the late response.

Let’s try these steps and check if it helps.

1. Boot up from your Windows 8 disc.

2. Don't click 'Install Now', click Repair Your Computer.

3. Click Advanced Options.

4. Click Other Options.

5. Click Diagnose my PC.

6. Wait for your computer to reboot.

Your computer has now an unlocked hard drive.

You may also refer to the link and check if it helps.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fc3c93ae-95d8-4b26-a085-b2742674bc8f/cannot-unlock-drive-and-unable-boot-back-into-windows-8?forum=W8ITProPreRel

Note: Modifying BIOS/complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of BIOS/CMOS settings can be solved. Modifications of the settings are at your own risk.

Hope it helps.

I kept getting DPC Watch dog violations (in both 8 and 8.1).  at random times and losing all my work. which is what led me having to get to where I am now.  The sad thing is though I bought my computer in nov 2013 I only just turned it on a couple weeks ago so I'm past my 90 day free no questions asked return period.

I'm in the same boat.  I'm probably just going to install windows 7 ultimate and give up on 8 and 8.1.  I say don't put out software that isn't fully fleshed out / usable.

I suspect the problem is probably due to the manufacturer installing the OS on a SSD.  SSDs are prone to having problems.  Since I'm somewhat messed up anyways, just swap out the SSD and replace it with a spare SATA HD and install fresh and stick with win 7 64 ultimate, since it works pretty well.    SSDs while they boot fast, they also crash fast.  All it takes is one memory 'fluke' and the SSD is hosed for that session and you get the BSOD or as apparently in win 8 (DPC watch dog violation) -- just renamed.    Unless you buy a high end SSD, its probably not worth it having SSD on your system.  In my experience, more often than not the quality on SSDs is suspect.  On a prior project we bought $250K worth of SSDs and almost every one of them failed out within 1 month so we got our money back.

I'm not a gamer, so having the OS on a SSD isn't really appealing to me.

thought the h/w is probably at fault, the software should be able to control the h/w in a friendly usable manner.  Currently its like we are back in the '80s before the days of plug n play.

I'm looking a screen that says this:

Automatic Repair:

Automatic Repair couldn't repair your pc.

Press Advanced options to try other options to repair your PC or shut down to turn off your PC.  Log file 

c:\windows\system32\logfiles\srt\srttrail.txt

Note; the path is useless because when I go to look at it, using the CMD window, the directory SRT doesn't exist.  (SRT or srt or any derivation of [sSrRtT])

then i have two buttons  'shut down' and 'advanced options' 

neither option really does much.

I've tried both.

I have os DVDs and that seems to be a better option in this case just to go back to Windows 7

Hi,

Thank you for sharing the information that helped you to resolve the issue. This will assist other community members as well.

Please feel free to ask more queries on Windows.

I just had a similar problem, not yet fixed.  I just installed 8.1 last week.  Today I got a blue screen and "Kernal_Data_Inpage_error"  I rebooted the computer and it all came up working just fine.  However, I did a search on this error and somewhere it stated that I should manually run CHKDSK /F /R .  I've been running it  for 2 1/2 hours and is stuck at 10% complete.  I was then told by Microsoft that is not uncommon.  Sometimes it will take up to 5 hours running CHKDSK.  Of course in the meantime I've tried everything but now I'm going to just let it run and see what happens.

Maybe I've been a little impatient?