A family member of mine recently went on vacation and turned off their computer, something they normally do not do, upon returning home it would not turn on and now returns the error message below. Generally friends and family come to me for help with computers and I have no problem, however this time I am a bit stumped. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

As you can see the error message is:

Status: 0xc000000e

Info: The best selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

Before going to this error message it briefly flashes the Windows loading screen. I have been able to confirm through the Windows RE Command Line and the dir command that the C: drive is accessible and likely is just suffering a bootup issue.

I have tried:

• Launching the repair process discussed in the error message three times however each time it requires a restart and then returns to the same error message.
• Changing the boot order to be hard drive first
• Getting into safe mode; F8 just results in the same error message before I can get to the menu to select safe mode
• I have checked to make sure the BCD (bcdedit, Boot Configuration Data) is still intact as per https://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH160475

I plan to try (but would like additional comments on):

• sfc /scannow; requires a restart and thus will likely result in the error message again
• A memory scan
• Bootrec as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392#method1
• Swapping IDE cables/ports
• Resetting the BIOS

I noticed others with similar issues around the web are dual-booting however this machine is not setup in a dual-boot environment. Additionally at one point this error message supposedly showed up before I started working on the computer:

The instruction at 0xfbe2584d referenced memory at 0x00000008. The memory could not be read.

As previously stated any additional suggestions or words of advice would be greatly apprecaited.