Fix Boot Error 0xC0000225 (Application is Missing or Corrupt)

Boot Error 0xC0000225 (Application is Missing or Corrupt) is caused by missing or corrupt system file.

Find out how to fix error 0xC0000225 (status 0xC0000225) by recovering original file from WinSxS Component Store using Emergency Boot Kit.

1. Symptoms of the problem

When computer is powered up, an error message "Status: 0xC0000225
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt" appears:

2. Normal boot sequence

The rest of this article refers to Windows 7, but all information below applies to Windows 10 and Windows 11 as well.

Normally Windows 7 boots as shown below:

1. BIOS loads 1st sector from HDD (Master Boot Record), verifies 55 AA signature and transfers control to Master Boot Record.
2. Master Boot Record scans partition table for active partition, then it loads 1st sector from active partition, verifies 55 AA signature, and transfers control to Boot Sector.
3. Boot Sector loads 15 additional sectors from the beginning of disk (Volume Boot Record) and transfers control to first additional sector of VBR.
4. Volume Boot Record loads BOOTMGR file from root directory of boot partition into the memory and transfers control to it.
5. BOOTMGR loads Boot\BCD registry hive and displays boot menu. BOOTMGR is able to run memory test and set safe mode boot flag per explicit user request. But normally, it loads winload.exe when computer boots normally (cold startup) or winresume.exe (when computer resumes from hibernation).
6. Winload.exe opens SYSTEM registry hive, gets list of drivers, loads NTOSKRNL.exe, loads drivers (*.SYS files) and transfers control to NTOSKRNL.exe.
7. Winresume.exe loads memory dump from hiberfil.sys and transfers control to it.

3. Defect in the boot sequence which leads to 'status 0xC0000225' boot error

Defect in the boot sequence which is a reason for 'status 0xC0000225' error is shown below:

1. BIOS loads 1st sector from HDD (Master Boot Record), verifies 55 AA signature and transfers control to Master Boot Record.
2. Master Boot Record scans partition table for active partition. There is one active partition, so Master Boot Record loads 1st sector from active partition (Boot Sector), and transfers control to it.
3. Boot Sector loads 15 additional sectors from the beginning of disk (Volume Boot Record) and transfers control to first additional sector of VBR.
4. Volume Boot Record loads BOOTMGR file from root directory of boot partition into the memory and transfers control to it.
5. BOOTMGR loads Boot\BCD registry hive and continues to winload.exe (cold startup).
6. winload.exe file is missing or corrupt.

4. How to fix status 0xC0000225

1) Download Emergency Boot Kit and deploy it to USB thumbdrive according to the instructions, then set up your BIOS to boot from USB thumbdrive. You need full version of Emergency Boot Kit to actually write changes to the disk, but it's recommended to try demo version to make sure  there are no hardware incompatibilities.

2) Boot into Emergency Boot Kit and run File Manager from the main menu:

3) Press Alt+F1 and choose your system partition from the menu. Then press Enter:

4) Navigate to the Windows folder (use UP and DOWN arrow keys and ENTER to step in):

5) Navigate to the winsxs subfolder:

6) Navigate to the subfolder named as amd64_microsoft-windows-b.. There will be multiple ones. You need a particular subfolder which contains winload.exe, winload.efi, winresume.exe and winresume.efi files.

7) Here's how it should look like:

8) Press TAB to switch input focus to the right panel, then press Alt+F2 to bring up disk selection menu for the right panel:

9) Navigate to the Windows folder on the right panel:

10) Navigate to the System32 folder on the right panel:

11) Press TAB to switch input focus back to the left panel and navigate to the winload.exe file using arrow keys:

12) Press F5. Confirm file copying by pressing ENTER:

13) Confirm file overwrite (for winload.exe) by pressing ENTER:

14) Done. Exit Emergency Boot Kit File Manager by pressing F10:

15) Reboot to Windows: