"Patched Windows boot loader detected" error

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
1

So I recently bought and installed Halo MCC and was setting it up the other day and I ran into a “patched Windows boot loader detected” error whenever I try to boot up the game with EasyAntiCheat (EAC) enabled. I’ve tried verifying game files, I updated Windows with various updates until I damn near bricked my computer (updating Windows helped with a prior problem but not this one), I uninstalled and reinstalled the game, I cleared my local Steam cache, I even tried running sfc/scannow in console and attempted to fix my Windows 7 installation, but so far, nothing has helped. The only thing I haven’t done is attempted a fresh install of my OS (Windows 7 Ultimate), which I’m not really in a position to do as I have too much stuff on this computer and would either need to buy a bunch of external HDD’s for backup or accept that everything gets wiped and even then, I’d lose a lot of digital licenses that I have for various apps that I’d have to repurchase. That’s a massive price tag that I can’t really handle right now.

Now, from doing some research on this problem, it seems to have four major causes:

  1. One is some sort of interference from either antivirus software or certain other apps (like Asus Aura Sync, among others), but as far as I can tell, I don’t have any of those conflicting apps nor do I use antivirus other than Windows Defender, so I doubt that’s it. I also tried making EAC an exception for Windows Defender which didn’t help either.

  2. Another is malware infection. A Windows Defender scan shows I have no malware, which I know doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything because it’s just Windows Defender, but if I had malware, I feel like I’d know by now. I haven’t had any major computer problems or slowdowns recently.

  3. Another is, of course, from actually cheating. I don’t cheat in online games and I haven’t even played Halo MCC before, so obviously that one is out.

  4. It could be that my Windows 7 OS is somehow pirated or otherwise not legitimate. I did buy it secondhand off a friend to try to save some money, but he said it was fine. I believed him up until now because I’ve done all sorts of things on this computer, including playing other online games, and this is the first time I’ve run into any problems with an anti-cheat program or anything like that. I used to play lots of TF2 and Overwatch and neither VAC nor Blizzard’s Warden (or whatever it’s called) have ever banned me or prevented me from playing those games.

Even if my OS is pirated, is there anything I could do to get EAC to let me play the game that isn’t simply reinstalling a legitimate OS? I might as well just buy a new computer at that point. I’ve submitted an official support ticket about this as well, but I figured that it was worth it to cover my bases and post in the forums as well because maybe some of you fine folks can help.

I just wanna play Halo, man.

2

I have a couple ideas about the OS issue if the OS is the actual problem.

You could try looking into playing Halo through a virtual machine. This might be very complicated though when it comes to passing your GPU to the virtual machine. Although, I’m not sure how EAC treats users playing through a virtual machine.

Another idea is to set up a dual boot system with your windows 7 and windows 10 (keyless). You would use Windows 10 for purely Halo and Windows 7 for everything else. You’ll just have an annoying watermark in Windows 10 since you don’t have it activated.

I think the latter option would give you the least amount of trouble in my opinion. I think it’s worth trying. Just make sure you do your research so you don’t accidentally break anything.

3

> 2533274886765675;2:
> I have a couple ideas about the OS issue if the OS is the actual problem.
>
> You could try looking into playing Halo through a virtual machine. This might be very complicated though when it comes to passing your GPU to the virtual machine. Although, I’m not sure how EAC treats users playing through a virtual machine.
>
> Another idea is to set up a dual boot system with your windows 7 and windows 10 (keyless). You would use Windows 10 for purely Halo and Windows 7 for everything else. You’ll just have an annoying watermark in Windows 10 since you don’t have it activated.
>
> I think the latter option would give you the least amount of trouble in my opinion. I think it’s worth trying. Just make sure you do your research so you don’t accidentally break anything.

The dual boot is an interesting idea, but it seems as though EAC has a track record of tripping on computers with dual boot setups even if both OS’s are legitimate. Although, to be fair, those dual boot setups tended to be Linux/Windows and not two Windows setups, so maybe that would make a difference.