Windows 11 boot failure after installing Visual Studio 2022

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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I had a serious issue on my PC while installing Visual Studio 2022, which I need to package Unreal Engine projects.

I tried the installation twice, and both times the same problem happened right after/during the Visual Studio installation.
The download was done using my phone hotspot.

During installation, the system started freezing and becoming unresponsive. The Visual Studio installer stalled during the download/verification phase, and after that Windows began failing to boot properly.

Symptoms

Before the final crash I noticed several strange behaviors:

  • The system became partially unresponsive.

  • The SSD was sometimes detected and sometimes not.

  • At one point the disk appeared as 0 bytes in the Windows installer.

  • After reconnecting the cables, the SSD appeared again.

Then Windows failed to boot with this error:

Recovery
Your PC/Device needs to be repaired

File: \Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM
Error code: 0xc000014c

This indicates registry corruption (SYSTEM hive).

Troubleshooting attempts

I tried several recovery commands:

  • chkdsk /f /r

  • bootrec /fixmbr

  • bootrec /fixboot

  • bootrec /rebuildbcd

I also checked:

C:\Windows\System32\Config\RegBack

but it was empty, so there was no registry backup to restore.

I also found an issue related to Intel Platform License Manager Service, which was timing out and seemed to cause system instability.

Final solution

Since the registry could not be restored and recovery failed, I had to do a clean installation of Windows 11 from a USB drive.

Question

Has anyone experienced something similar, where installing Visual Studio leads to registry corruption and boot failure?

I’m trying to understand whether the cause was:

  • the Visual Studio installation itself,

  • an Intel service conflict,

  • the phone hotspot/download corruption,

  • or possible SSD/SATA instability.

2

Hey there @IlarioPla! Welcome back to the community!

This symptom specifically makes me think there could be some form of hardware issue that occurs under high load. Do you have spare SATA cables around to swap out for testing? Is your SSD your only drive? During regular operation are there any errors in event viewer?

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I already checked that possibility.

I reseated the SATA and power connections and also changed SATA port during troubleshooting. I don’t currently have a spare SATA data cable to test with, so I haven’t ruled that out 100%.

Yes, the Samsung 870 EVO 1TB is my only internal drive.

During normal operation the PC is mostly stable. I installed Unreal Engine, Blender, Chrome, GPU drivers and other software without issues. The freezes seem to happen specifically during Visual Studio installation or after some Windows updates.

In Event Viewer / Reliability Monitor I saw:

  • Windows Update driver update failures

  • ASUS Update Helper reconfiguration failure

  • an Intel Platform License Manager Service timeout at one point

  • improper shutdown entries after forced restarts

I did not see clear recurring disk errors, and CrystalDiskInfo reports the SSD health as Good.

What made me suspect software/update corruption is that I eventually got a Windows boot failure with error 0xc000014c referring to \Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM, which points to registry corruption after a freeze/restart.

At this point I’m starting to suspect some kind of driver conflict.

4

Registry corruption can happen if the process of updating an entry is interrupted, which sounds like it is consistently interrupted while writing. You might be on to something with the firmware. Are there any firmware updates to the 870 EVO?

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I checked the SSD firmware and my 870 EVO is already on SVT02B6Q, so it doesn’t seem like I’m missing a firmware update. The only odd thing is that the drive doesn’t show up properly in Samsung Magician, except under System Details.The PC was completely stable for about 10 days, then yesterday Visual Studio froze the system and things got bad enough that I had to reinstall Windows. Then today Windows froze again right after Windows Update tried installing things like KB5077241 and the Microsoft Corporation Driver Update 10.0.26100.6700, and I also saw ASUS Update Helper failures. I’m honestly going a bit crazy trying to track down the real cause.

6

The freezing during other high load operations like a windows update makes this a hard issue to identify. Something could be crashing your storage controller, but if we can’t get a clear indicator of what that is from event viewer, it’s going to be difficult to diagnose at all. I would assume the device should display correctly in Samsung’s driver software, but since it’s not that might be our best hint. When you say it doesn’t show up properly, how does it display?

I can’t speak to the ASUS update helper failures, but that’s through “Armoury Crate” right?

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hi @IlarioPla ,

Please can you follow the instructions to install Unreal Engine for Fortnite

This will automatically check and fix any problems.

In the Epic Games Launcher type unreal engine in the search box

and Click install .

This install will basically test and set up your Windows 11.

If there is an error it will be easier to fix then VS2022 install.

UEFN will not install correctly from Launcher on any Windows 11 (eleven) version needs to run Elevated "Run As Administrator - General / Issues and Bug Reporting - Epic Developer Community Forums

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In samsung magician software the SSD doesn’t sho up in the main drive dashboard, but it does sshow up under system details of the samsung software. Device menager and crystalDiskInfo both see it normally.
Those are the event viewer’s error from when i started the pc this mourning:

  • Corruption was discovered in the file system structure on volume C:.
    Corruption was found in a file system index structure. The file reference number is 0x4000000024de8. The file name is "\Users\…\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\logs\Common". The corrupted index attribute is “:$I30:$INDEX_ALLOCATION”.

  • The server {6C752774-29FB-4E50-8BB1-97098425A77C} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

  • Secure Boot update failed to update SBAT with error: Secure Boot is not enabled on this computer.
    For more information, see: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2169931

  • Timeout (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the ASUS Update Service (asus) service to connect.

  • The ASUS Update Service (asus) service failed to start due to the following error:
    The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

  • The ASUS Update Service (asus) service failed to start due to the following error:
    The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

  • DCOM got error “%%1053” while attempting to start the service GoogleUpdaterService147.0.7703.0 with arguments “–com-service” in order to run the server:
    {8018F647-BF07-55BB-82BE-A2D7049F7CE4}

  • Updated Secure Boot certificates are available on this device, but they have not yet been applied to the firmware. Review the published guidance to complete the update and maintain full protection. The signature information for this device is included here.
    DeviceAttributes: BaseBoardManufacturer:ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.; FirmwareManufacturer:American Megatrends Inc.; FirmwareVersion:1820; OEMModelBaseBoard:ROG STRIX B760-F GAMING WIFI; OEMManufacturerName:ASUS; OSArchitecture:amd64;
    BucketId: a2b2ee208f38f9ca464707375a2b466178bbb2c715068d7be9fb84323946a234
    BucketConfidenceLevel: Under Observation - More Data Needed
    UpdateType:
    For more information, see: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2301018

  • The log for channel Microsoft-Windows-AppXDeploymentServer/Operational is corrupted, and some data has been lost.

  • {Registry Hive Recovered} The registry hive (file) '??\C:\Users\…\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat’ was corrupted and has been recovered. Some data might have been lost.

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Update: restarted the Computer and windows was locked in the log in page. I’m reinstalling windows for the 3rd time :frowning:

10

Seeing file corruption in multiple areas like this leads me to believe it’s still possibly hardware related but none of the diagnostics are pointing to it. We can attempt to dig a bit more on the software side.

Can you take a look in your device manager at the storage managers? Do they have any warning symbols indicating error or is it missing?

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