Can't find ntoskrnl.exe on boot

[sahurd63]

Trying to repair my niece's laptop.  Not entirely sure whether she's running Windows 10 or 11, but suspect it's 11.

When starting the computer, I see the message your PC/Device needs to be repaired (File \Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe and Error Code: 0xc000007b).  Says you'll need to use recovery tools.   Tried F1 to enter recovery environment, and get the message "A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed, with Error Code 0xc0000225

When I choose ESC to go to the startup menu, I've run seemingly all the diagnostics and it comes up clean (including a full scan of the disk).

I created Win 11 install media on USB and was able to boot from the media. (BTW-it shows both the USB and the laptop's SSD as boot options).  I chose "repair your computer".  Under "troubleshooting advanced options", I tried "startup repair" & it said that startup repair couldn't repair your pc.  If I choose "System Restore", it says "To use system restore you must specify which windows installation to restore". If I go to command prompt, I see the x: drive (seemingly the USB media) and a c: drive (seems like a boot partition that's also part of the USB media).

If I boot from an Ubuntu LInux USB, I do see the SSD as an encrypted volume.

During some earlier troubleshooting, I did get a prompt for entering a Bitlocker key (which I now have).  

Looking for next steps.  Suspect there's something wrong related to Bitlocker or the TPM (although it checks out fine in diagnostics).  Would ideally like to repair the install instance rather than blow it away.

[erico]

That is likely to be a Windows BCD error.

Do you know if the drive volume is MBR or GPT?