This week my after install a new Windows 10 build suddenly my trust Microsoft Surface Go would not start up start up anymore. The Surface Go crashed during start up with a message saying “Your PC/Device needs to be repaired” , “The Boot Configuration Data file doesn’t contain valid information for an operating system“. The error code is 0xc000098.

There seem to be a few different ways to get your system up and running, and this is how I fixed my machine. The best news is that it didn’t require me to wipe or re-install anything.

The first step is to create a bootable USB drive from a working PC which you can use to repair your device. To do this you will need a USB memory stick.

Put the USB drive into a working Windows 10 PC and launch the Windows 10 Recovery Drive by typing Recovery Drive in the search box.

You do not need the system files so you can uncheck the box and then click Next.

Select your USB drive and click Next

Windows will then go off and create the recovery drive on the USB stick.

While you are on your working PC go to https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey?refd=support.microsoft.com and sign in via your Microsoft account. The page will list the Bitlocker recovery key for your devices keep you will need later.

Now you need to go to your Surface Go and configure it to boot from a USB drive.

Shutdown your Surface Go and go into the BIOS by holding down the power button a volume up and the same time.

Select Boot configuration and move USB Storage to the top of the boot order list. Then select Exit from the menu and restart the PC with the USB drive inserted.

Windows will then boot into the recovery image of Windows 10.

Select your keyboard layout:

Select Advanced options from the menu:

Then select command prompt from the menu.

You will then be prompted to enter your bitlocker recovery key, enter the key from the list on Microsoft.com that you looked up earlier in the process. Once you have entered the recovery key you will be presented with a command prompt.

A couple of searches for the error suggested that running bootrec command would fix it.

  • Bootrec /fixmbr
  • Bootrec /fixboot
  • Bootrec /rebuildBCD

The first one worked but the 2nd one said “Access is denied” and so I had to try something else.

From the command prompt I ran bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us


This worked so I typed Exit to return to the menu and then selected Continue for the PC to reboot into Windows. If everything has worked OK Windows 10 should start up normal.

This worked for me, hopefully it will work for you. If you did something else to get yours working please leave a comment so I can add it to the post.

20 thoughts on “How to fix a Surface Go start up error 0xc000098 (Boot Configuration Data file corrupted)”
  1. Followed your instructions and it worked. After the bootrec commands I took out the recovery drive and it booted from the Surface Go. My problem arose during a hardware ROM update from Microsoft. After boot up the update resumed from 80%. Presumably the boot record became corrupted and your process sorted it out. Thanks for the post!

  2. Dear Ian,
    thank you very much for sharing this great solution.
    Without “bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us” it would never have worked out and I would have lost all of my data on my Surface 6 pro. It seems that many others had the same problem.
    It started all with a simple routine Microsoft update. I hope that this will not happen repeatedly.
    With best wishes,
    Carsten

  3. When I ran bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us it said “Failure when attempting to copy boot files”. Any suggestions? Thanks!!

  4. Waw! I searched all over the internet to find a working solution. Even the microsoft support pages and forums didn\’t give the right answer. But your solution worked like a charm! Thank you so much. I just had to adjust /l en-us to /l en-uk
    Greetings!

  5. Waw! I searched all over the internet to find a working solution. Even the microsoft support pages and forums didn’t give the right answer. But your solution worked like a charm! Thank you so much. I just had to adjust /l en-us to /l en-uk
    Greetings!

  6. This tutorial worked until it came to try each fixmbr fixboot etc. When I tried to enter any of the commands, it says “FixMbr is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”

  7. I was able to do all the steps above, but when I clicked to continue to go to windows, it restarted the computer and sent me back to the recovery screen

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