How to overcome error 0x800F0A12 while installing Win 7 SP1?

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I am trying to install Win 7 SP1 (using Windows Update), but it failed with 0x800F0A12. I have a dual boot configuration windows - linux, otherwise perfectly normal configuration.

This web page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-service-pack-1-sp1-installation-error-0x800F0A12 suggest some fixes, but only the first one seems relevant. However I get:

C:\Users\ga>mountvol /E
Access is denied.

The main reason why I am so keen to have it installed is because Windows stopped recognizing my optical drive (it just completely vanished after one of the automatic updates). It might be related to this issue.

An ideas how to fix it?

EDIT: Following @vcsjones' advice I managed to run mountvol /E successfully, but it didn't help with the SP1 installation unfortunately.

windows-7
windows-update
service-pack
asked on Super User Feb 24, 2011 by Grzenio • edited Feb 25, 2011 by Grzenio

2 Answers

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I solved the problem by going to disk manager and setting the windows C: disk as active. On my setup, that didn't cause any problems with GRUB and everything worked fine.

answered on Super User Feb 24, 2011 by AndrejaKo
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I have been also getting the 800F0A12 error when I was installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1. That is what I finally did.

  1. Restored Windows 7 master boot record (MBR) with the install-mbr command. As a result, I was able to boot straight to Windows 7 bypassing the GRUB menu.
  2. Extracted BootRec.exe from a recovery partition and executed BootRec.exe /FixMbr.
  3. Marked Windows 7 system disk as active in the disk management tool (see @AndrejaKo's answer).

I am not sure which of these steps are crucial, but I was able to successfully update only after I completed the last step above.

(Then, I fixed MBR to enable GRUB back.)

FYI. Originally, my Lenovo ThinkPad X201i laptop had Windows 7 only preinstalled. I repartitioned it in order to install Linux. This is how my disk looks like now:

Windows/Linux dual boot partitioning

  • /dev/sda1 - a small system partition that came with the laptop
  • /dev/sda2 - a Window 7 system partition
  • /dev/sda4 - a Linux partition; long time ago, it was a part of /dev/sda2
  • /dev/sda3 - a recovery partition that came with the laptop
answered on Super User Aug 5, 2018 by Alexander Pozdneev

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