Error 0xc00000e9, hard drive still readable

[Inflorescence]

My cat knocked my laptop (Sager NP6652 (Clevo W650SR), Windows 8.1) off the coffee table, and the edge that hit the ground is where the hard drive is sitting right behind.

While the laptop didn't shut down automatically, the next time it was restarted, the Sager logo appeared, then a black screen for a while, then this blue screen.


I've read that the most common reason for this is the hard drive getting broken/corrupted, but the thing that confuses me is that I was able to browse through my hard drive while Windows was asking me to browse for a driver. Is it possible for a hard drive to be broken, but still readable?

Here are some steps I have taken:

Running bcdedit shows partition=c: as suggested here.

Vijay B's reply here. When I ran the final rebuildbcd, it changed from 0 instances to 1, but when I rebooted, the number went back down to 0.

Attempting to reinstall Windows has Windows telling me that I am lacking some driver; this is where I found out that my hard drive was still readable.

I can't boot from CD, because the option doesn't appear, even though UEFI is disabled in BIOS.

There's also an Ubuntu partition on the hard drive, but I'm not sure how to get to it now that I'm running Windows 8.1. And now that the hard drive may be broken.

Is there anything I might be able to do, before I go buy a new hard drive? Is there any way I can boot from something else?

 

[okcnaline]

Hm... Boot process messed up. Download a Windows 8 recovery disk from Microsoft, I guess?

 

[hang-the-9]

Make sure you have your boot USB drive in a USB2 port, if you have Windows 7 it won't boot off a USB3 port. Don't know if Windows 8 is the same way.
You can make a disk like Hirens or Ultimate Boot CD and run one of the disk check utilities they have to scan the hard drive, the BIOS may also have a hardware check to run.