Windows 8.1 startup repair fails evey time

[Pardus]

In between installing Windows 8.1 and Mint, Windows 8.1 failed to boot. So i booted the os on the flash drive and attempted the start-up repair. It failed on me every time.

So then i tried the command prompt option:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd

bcdedit /set {default} device partition=c:
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:

Mint boots just fine, not Windows., any suggestions ?

 

[postmortemIA]

mint took over active partition? so that BIOS passes loading to its partition? can't you add an entry in mint to boot to windows through grub?

 

[JEDIYoda]

most likely a user error...

 

[code65536]

The best I can suggest is run "bcdedit /enum" and see if any of the entries look wrong.

I had a situation recently where I wanted to test something but didn't want this test to mess up my Windows install, so I disconnected all my drives and plugged a spare drive into the eSATA port. I installed Windows to the eSATA drive, did my experiments, and when I was done, I unplugged the eSATA drive and plugged all my internal drives back in.

Except Windows no longer booted. Automatic repair was useless. bcdedit /fixboot was useless. I eventually ran bcdedit /enum, and noticed that the configuration for the bootmgr was missing the device. This system uses UEFI, so information about where the boot manager is found is stored in the NVRAM, and my eSATA test install overwrote that. Once I knew what was missing, I could fix it manually (after looking at the configuration of another UEFI-based system to see what it should look like).

BTW, for the bootmgr, device looks like
partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
where you replace the 1 with the position of the partition containing /boot. The boot loader uses "partition=C:", but bootmgr uses the volume position.