Hard drive locked error during Windows 10/11 recovery

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by Vladimir Popescu 

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what is the difference between Recovery disk and repair disk

If you were trying to perform a recovery of your installation of Windows 10 and see the hard drive locked error message, you should know you are not the only one experiencing this issue.

The good news is that you can do something about this issue, and beyond this, you found the right article to help you solve it.

Seeing this error message may make you believe that you lost the data stored on your PC, or that you need to reinstall Windows altogether. That is surely not the case.

Please read on to find out how to proceed in order for the recovery process to be completed without errors.

Want to move Windows 10 to an external hard drive? Try these methods

Fix hard drive locked Windows 10 recovery errors

coffee with laptop - Hard drive locked error during windows 10 recovery
Note: Please wait after entering each command and for the command prompt to reappear before typing in the next command.

  1. Click Cancel on the error message -> the computer will boot to the Windows 10 Recovery Environment.
  2. Click on Troubleshoot -> select Advanced options.
  3. On the Advanced options screen -> click the Command Prompt.
  4. Inside the Command Prompt window, type the following commands and press Enter for each of them:
  • bootrec /FixMbr
  • bootrec /fixboot
  • bootrec /RebuiltBcd

Note: After entering some of the commands mentioned above, you might be presented with a menu allowing you to choose Yes <y>; No<n>; and All<a>.

In order to continue with the rebuild process, you should choose Yes <y> for all prompts, then do this:

  1. Type Exit and press Enter to close the command prompt window.
  2. Your computer will now restart and should allow the repair process to be completed without error messages.
  3. If the problem still persists after applying these steps, you can contact the manufacturer of your device for technical support.

Conclusion

In today’s short article we explore the best method to solve the hard drive locked error during Windows 10 recovery process.

Please make sure to follow the steps carefully to avoid any other issues.

Feel free to let us know if this guide helped you by using the comment section found below this article.

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More about the topics: windows 10

Vladimir Popescu

Vladimir Popescu Shield

Being an artist his entire life while also playing handball at a professional level, Vladimir has also developed a passion for all things computer-related. With an innate fascination for research and analysis, and realizing many other people share his passion for this subject, he delved into writing Windows-related articles, so other people can also benefit from the acquired information. When not writing kick-ass articles, Vladimir likes to spend his time doing Crossfit and creating art.