Can I recover from BSOD related to FLTMGR.SYS error?

Recently my 1TB SSD was damaged and I returned to the shop to replace under Warranty. Thankfully I had kept my previous 480GB SSD, so I used that in the meantime. Yesterday I received a replacement 1TB SSD from the shop, so I decided to clone the 480GB SSD on the 1TB SSD to avoid doing a clean installation. I booted in Acronis Rescue and I did the clone. Although the clone was "successful", then new SSD would not boot in Windows. Automatic repair could not fix it, so I opened a Command Prompt to investigate. I discovered that the disk was so corrupt that the dir command could not display its contents. I run chkdsk to find and fix any logical errors. It found hundreds of them and "fixed" them. Of course it still could not boot. I decided it was a bad clone for some reason, so I connected my 480GB SSD back to do it again. However, I tried to load Windows first, just to see everything worked properly. Unfortunately Windows won't boot on the original 480GB SSD either, after a few seconds I see a BSOD (don't remember the exact message) referring to file FLTMGR.SYS as the culprit. A quick Google from my smartphone revealed that this probably is an unrecoverable error and in Microsoft's forum they suggested to either reset Windows or clean install.

I hoped that here in Elevenforum I would be more lucky and searching for FLTMGR.SYS only found the following thread, but it was not useful:


Of course I have already tried to boot in Safe Mode, it won't boot either, same BSOD. Before I wipe the 1TB SSD to clean install, I would like to know if there is even a slim chance to recover the original installation and avoid all this trouble. Has anyone ever recovered from this BSOD, or all did a clean installation? If there is absolutely no solution, I will clean install Windows 11 in 1TB and then copy-paste my data from the 480GB disk.

PS: How can I retrieve my favorites and passwords in Microsoft Edge from the 480GB folders? I did sing in with my Microsoft account, but I hadn't sync everything, so I would rather retrieve them from the disk. Is there any way to see the History, to find out which tabs I had opened last time? Thanks!

you could use a Linux live USB to recover bookmarks/favourites from either SSD.
have you checked your BIOS boot menu to see if there is more then one Windows trying to boot from the menu.
also disable secure boot and reset the TPM may help.

best of luck, Steve ..

This is a Legacy BIOS (MBR) installation, my main PC (2nd system specs) is unsupported anyway, so I did a Legacy installation, rather than UEFI to save valuable disk space on my earlier 250GB SSD. As for my bookmarks, I don't need them until I reinstall Windows 11 (hopefully I can avoid it). After that, I can connect my SATA 480GB SSD on a SATA-to-USB adapter and take any files. I am not sure if this works with Microsoft Edge, but if you copy all the Mozilla folders from one system to the respective location of another and then you install Firefox, the installer detects them and offers to upgrade, Just select upgrade to reinstall the latest version and you have everything back, your bookmarks, your passwords, the addons and your theme! I will try copying all Edge folders from my old SSD and then reinstall Edge using the offline installer. It will hopefully work and have access to my favorites, passwords and history. In worst case Edge will be damaged, so I will remove and reinstall it. Similarly for Google Chrome and Opera browser. Just copy all folders from one system to another before installing.

Tough luck. I had to reinstall Windows 11 afterall. I booted with the USB, typed the appropriate keys in the Registry to bypass compatibility check and then saw the disk selection screen. I clicked on my SSD to begin and I got an error that I cannot install Windows there with code 0x80300024. After I almost fainted, I Googled for a solution and was to disconnect all other drives and leave only the SSD. Thankfully that worked! I just post my experience to help others with the same error message when trying to install Windows 11.

PS: I have already started installing Windows 11 but if there is any solution to fix my old installation, please post!

Fltmgr.sys is the Filter Manager kernel driver, it's absolutely critical to Windows. Filter drivers are used by various storage drivers, security products like Defender and others, and advanced HW performance or monitoring tools.

If you're getting a BSOD from it, there's serious corruption with the old image. The only way past it would be to perform a repair install. On paper, you could do a DISM restorehealth on a mounted image, but given you had SSD corruption it's probably not worth the aggravation.

A repair install would guarantee all the bad files are replaced with known good copies. That's also assuming the filesystem isn't corrupted too.

Back in Windows XP you could start installing Windows on the hard disk and if an older installation was detected, it wasn't copied to Windows.old, it was done an in-place upgrade/repair installation instead. Since Windows Vista the only way to do an in-place upgrade/repair installation is starting Setup inside Windows. It sort of beats the purpose. If Windows work, you can try and fix it and do an in-place upgrade/repair installation as a last resort.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, copying all the Microsoft Edge from my old 480GB SSD to the new Windows 11 installation on the 1TB SSD at the respective locations, WORKED! I have all my favorites and my history. Not sure if all passwords work, but better than nothing!