Linux – Windows 8 won’t boot after Boot Repair

bootbootrepairlinuxmulti-bootwindows 8

I've got a Sony Vaio laptop. Until yesterday I had Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 installed. Today I upgraded to Windows 8, which killed my OS selection screen. So I booted to Ubuntu 12.10 from a USB stick and ran Boot Repair. This recovered the GRUB screen and let me boot into my Ubuntu 12.04 installation, but now I can' boot Windows 8.

When I select the option that booted Windows 7 before, it looks like it wants to start Windows 7 (sic) again (black screen, with the text "Windows is loading" or something), but then reboots the machine after a few seconds.

I'm sure Boot Repair can fix this, but I know far too little about the whole booting thing to know the right settings for it.

Here's my boot repair report thing.

Edit: I really want to emphasize that it seems to be trying to start Windows 7. I'm pretty sure Boot Repair selected some old Windows 7 backup files. I already ran Boot Repair once after I installed Ubuntu. Maybe it's using some files or configs it created back then.

Best Answer

I had this issue. Here is how I fixed it:

  1. UEFI booted a USB flash drive which contained the Windows 8 installer.
  2. Clicked Install and chose Custom.
  3. Deleted all System, MSR and Recovery partitions.
  4. Selected the OS partition and clicked Install.
  5. It showed a message that setup will now create system partitions, I clicked OK and it recreated the EFI bootloader again.
  6. Ran the following commands one-by-one in Command Prompt: bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, bootrec /rebuildbcd
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