0

I recently installed Windows 7 Pro, Windows 8.1 Pro, and Ubuntu 14.04 as a multi-boot on my pc with help from this page. Everything works great with the chainloading boot. I can boot into whichever OS I want without a problem.

The only annoyance I have is that when I go to the windows bootloader from Grub, it's not the Windows 8 GUI bootloader, it's the generic black/white boot.

How can I restore it to the normal Windows 8 bootloader without messing up the way my computer boots? By the way, before installing Ubuntu I chose Windows 7 as the default boot...I don't know if that has something to do with it.

Parto
  • 15,325
  • 24
  • 86
  • 117
user294248
  • 21
  • 1
  • 2
  • I'm voting this to close as off-topic because controlling Windows bootloader apperence is not within the scope of Ubuntu. – Anwar Dec 29 '16 at 10:08

2 Answers2

2

Ok, so here's how I solved the problem.

I restored my Windows 8 graphical bootloader, which wiped grub out of the boot partition. At that point I only had Windows 8 and Windows 7 in the boot menu. I added Grub 2 to the Windows 8 bootloader menu using EasyBCD. Now I can enter the Grub 2 boot menu from the Windows 8 GUI bootloader without any problems.

I guess it still is a chainloading type of boot, but now I don't have any legacy bootloaders.

Eric Carvalho
  • 54,385
user294248
  • 21
  • 1
  • 2
0

The guide you used is for legacy booting. I assume that the GUI Boot you are talking about depends on UEFI booting.

You would possibly need to convert from MBR to GPT partitions scheme. As that may cause data loss, I'd recommend making backups of all partitions, discard the old partition table, create an ESP, (install a default UEFI bootloader like gummiboot), restore the backups, install and configure EFI bootloaders for every operating system.

  • For Linux you can use the live media. To backup use the raw image functionality of the disks tool (slower) or a tar backup. Learn how to use grub-install and grub-update. Try avoiding boot-repair, you wouldn't learn much, only be more confused.

  • For Windows use DISM/imagex to create WIM images of the partitions (DISM is the imagex replacement on Windows 8 and recommended, but I just can't find a good SU question now). Configure the Windows EFI bootloaders with bcdboot (Windows 7 is missing some options, but it can install EFI bootloaders).

    • DISM capture (backup) example:

      Dism /Capture-Image /ImageFile:c:\my-windows-partition.wim /CaptureDir:C:\ /Name:"My Windows partition"

    • DISM apply (restore) example:

      Dism /apply-image /imagefile:N:\Images\my-windows-partition.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:C:\

I recommend staying away from everything about legacy booting or guides for booting pre-2012/Windows 8.

Community
  • 1
LiveWireBT
  • 28,763