Maybe I misremembered. First, you need to be able to get back into Windows to activate the EasyBCD.exe. So, you need to restore the boot manager. If you were careful, and made a restore disk in Windows8 when you got your new machine, then that will do it, as would reinstalling Windows8 from the restore drive (but that will overwrite everything on /dev/sda, I guess). I did have a disk which allowed me to write a boot manager for Windows7, but due to my filing system, or lack of it, I can't find it. If all fails, there's a paid for disk here (paid for because Microsoft demand a fee):

http://systemdiscs.com/?utm_source=n...ta_64_Recovery

That would overwrite Grub, so go into your Linux distribution and reset the boot loader to boot from the root partition. If your loader is Grub, then you could do this afterwards by using the installation disk in repair mode, mounting the root partition and editing the file /boot/grub/menu.list, resetting the image to (hdm,n) where m and n are the disk and partition numbers, zero indexed. If Grub2, I don't know how to do it this way.

When you have got Windows working, download EasyBCD to there (or copy the one you already have if you can) and run it.

You can run the bootinfoscript from within Fedora. In the description box at the site I posted above, there is a link with instructions on how to run the script. It should download to your /home/username directory. So in a terminal change to that directory to run it. If it is not there, check other directories like Documents, etc.

I'm not seeing any luck booting from USBs, I don't really know that I'd even be able to boot from a CD. I'm googling how to disable grub but I can't seem to find something to actually eliminate it.

How exactly would I go about restoring from the restore drive? I just got the comp so I don't mind going back to stock, and I know which partition it's on.

Hey King,
please provide the info about the hard drives and partitions on that machine. I haven't had my hands on a non-virtualized Windows 8 installation yet, but Windows 7 installation usually has a small hidden partition about of 100 Mb size and you should load that one via GRUB, not the partition where Windows folder is located. This might be the case for Windows 8 as well.

As indicated above, EasyBCD is a windows executable file and is useless on a computer with windows which you cannot boot. It only enables "easier" modification of the windows bootloader. Neosmart technologies had a bootable CD which you could download and burn to a CD and boot the computer with and use if to repair the windows vista/7 bootloader. It contains files needed to do this which your recovery CD you create after your installation does not. Read the link below at neosmart which also has a download of the CD. It is not longer free and the reason is expalined at the site. I downloaded the win 7 a couple of years ago when it was still free. I don't know whether there is a CD which will work on win 8? If you're using windows regularly, problems like this would seem to make it worthwhile to pay the extra money to get a full installation CD when you buy the computer from the manufacturer. From what I've been able to determine, that is usually $15 - $25USD.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/window...-repair-discs/

If you haven't yet downloaded the bootinfoscript and run, that would probably be the best thing to do and won't cost anything.

I suspect your PC has a UEFI booting setup and that to boot Windows 8 you need to do go via UEFI. I suggest that you go into BIOS/UEFI on starting up the PC to see what boot options are available to you. On my PC that is done by pressing 'del'. Alternatively F8 might bring up a boot menu.

I am not sure that the bootloader repair programs that have been suggested are the right way forward in this instance. You might also see if you can mount the EFI partition in Linux and check that the efi boot loaders are in place.

Sorry, the instructions had a different location for the file so it was saying it didn't exist. I got it now, I've attached the results for those interested.

Attached Files

RESULTS.txt (27.6 KB, 42 views)

So you have at least 4 bootloaders available.

Grub2 on the MBR of your first hard disk
Syslinux on the MBR of your second hard disk
Grub.efi in your EFI partition
bootx64.efi which probably boots Windows in your EFI partition and another copy, possibly a backup on sda3

In my experience you will need to boot Windows from EFI and I have not found Grub2 to be capable of doing that.

I repeat you have to get into your UEFI/BIOS system by pressing the appropriate key on start-up and trying the boot options listed there.

Right. I hold F2, and I get into it. It doesn't matter where I tell it to boot from, HDD, USB, or a different Ubuntu grub loader that used to work; it all takes me right to GRUB.

Do you need to boot just 2 OSes or is there a Windows 7 installation as well?

You can read this article to understand the basics of EFI & Grub

Ideally I'd only want the two. Ideally, Fedora and Win8, but also good Ubuntu and Win8. And I've found a way to do that... but if I get into Win8, I'm going to get a restore usb made (learned that lesson) run EasyBCD, and try to get Fedora again. Thanks for the link, that's the kind of stuff I need to read at this point!

Do you get a screen that looks like this? http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur...9QEwAQ&dur=427

Do you have UEFI options in the list?
Do you see any error messages flashing past?

It also occurs to me - have you thought of re-enabling secure boot ( can you do that ?) and seeing what happens?

It looks like this: http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/image/s...v=mpbl-1&px=-1

And it gives me the option of UEFI or Legacy OS. No error messages.

I tried doing Secure Boot, but when I do that, it simply won't boot.

I am running out of suggestions. You might think of trying to see if you can set up booting off a USB stick with efi. There is a good how to herehttp://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla..._install_media