WRkrn.sys causing blue screen failure

Question

Sorry if I am posting this in the wrong section, this is more of a software issue... My brother-in-law bought a Dell Inspiron 660s back in 2012 from Best Buy, so it came with Webroot installed already (I do not have any product keys or codes for it). Came with Windows 8 but he has since upgraded to Win10. He contacted me to look at it for him because I work in IT. Apparently he did an uninstall (not sure how he did it) and the driver 'WRkrn.sys' seems to be leftover. After a Windows update the computer rebooted and now it's going to the dreaded blue screen of death. Before it gets to the blue screen, the Dell logo comes up and underneath it says 'Preparing Automatic Repair' I don't even have the chance to hit F8 to try and get into Safe Mode. Then it goes to the blue screen that says 'Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. The OS couldn't be loaded because a critical system driver is missing or contains errors.' File: \WINDOWS\System32\drivers\WRkrn.sys Error code: 0xc000007b You'll need to use the recovery tools (he only has the drivers & utilities disc and can't boot to that). I looked up this file and it's related to Webroot anti-virus. Press enter to try again (does nothing) Press F8 for startup settings (goes to another blue screen with options that don't do anything) Press ESC for UEFI firmware settings (brings me to the BIOS). Then it goes to this blue screen if I hit F8... NONE of these options do anything. They all just bring me back to the original blue screen of death. So I can't even get into safe mode to try and delete this file. Only thing I can do is get into BIOS. He does not have a recovery disc, the only disc it came with is software & utilities disc (can't boot to that). Can somebody please assist me with this? Mainly trying to get into safe mode so I can remove this driver and not have to deal with Webroot anymore. Thanks in advance. Sorry for the sideways pictures.

zdub86 · Accepted Answer

Just wanted to let SpeedStep and anybody else having a similar problem know this was NOT a hardware issue. The hard drive was not corrupt. It was just that one bad file WRkrn.sys (a Webroot anti-virus software). I saved money by booting into mini Windows XP using Hiren's boot CD, renamed that corrupt file, rebooted into Win10 successfully with no blue screen, and then uninstalled Webroot. Issue resolved.

But thanks for your suggestion.

zdub86 · Answer

What do you think caused this? Why would the hard drive suddenly be corrupted like this? I searched for that driver and it's for an anti-virus program called Webroot. Is there any way I can get into safe mode to delete this driver??

speedstep · Answer

The hard drive is physically bad and the windows kernel is physically damaged.

You need to reinstall from scratch on a non bad drive.

The screen is from the recovery partition which does not repair physically bad drives.

zdub86 · Answer

I also ran diagnostics and my hard drive passed all tests. I don't think this is hardware related, but thanks for the suggestion regardless.

Windows General

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