Solved Windows 8 Won't Boot

Hi all, I'm having the darnedest Windows 8 issue. I recently installed Windows 8.1 as a 2nd OS on my Windows 7 PC. I installed Win8.1 on a brand new Samsung A840 SSD, and am dual booting it with Windows 7 (installed on an entirely different drive). I am still using Win7 as my default.

The install went fine. After a few days, I attempted to boot into Win8 and after a few seconds of the initial logo loading screen, I was greeted with a blank, purple screen (the same color as my chosen color scheme). Rebooting into Win8 I was prompted to let Windows check the disk for continuity errors, but even after identifying and fixing errors Win8 just hangs on this blank screen.

I was able to boot into Safe Mode successfully. However, a normal boot always leads to the blank colored screen.

I used the troubleshooting options available by booting from the install disc - first refresh and then reset. Both ran successfully but did not fix the issue.

At this point I booted back into WIn7 and ran CrystalDisk. The SSD reports 'Good'.

The next step was deleting the Windows 8 partition, reformatting it, and reinstalling Win8. Win8 is on an 100GB simple volume and the rest of the SSD is unallocated. Again, the install went fine. After a few hours it crashed into an all green blank screen (I picked a different color this time). Now when I try to run "refresh" or "reset" from the DVD I get an error message that says "your computer could not be reset. No changes were made".

At this point, I'm just confused... I will continue to use Win7 for 99% of my productivity/gaming/etc but I work at a college Help Desk so I'd like to think I can figure this out with a little collaboration. I don't have much Windows 8 experience but I'm seeing more and more customers all the time with Win8 laptops/tablets so I'd like to find out as much as I can.

I can't eliminate either the OS or the SSD as the problem. Any thoughts about what to try next?

No ideas anyone? I might try installing Ubuntu on the SSD to see if it runs in to any problems...

If you can get into Admin Safe Mode you can try "Bootrec /Fixmbr and then /Scanos" - See if it finds both OSes.

If you installed 8,1 into the system, while you had the 7 drive loaded, it might have stuck the bootloader for 8.1 into the System area of your Windows 7 Drive, that's what happened to me, for Windows 8 - The Bootloader is on my Windows 7 drive, if I take it out, no boot to 8.

I used Bootrec /ScanOS and it found Windows 8 and fixed the boot entry, I had to do that after moving the Windows 8 to a new Drive.

I'm not sure if Bootrec on Windows 7 will find Windows 8 and vice versa, Windows 8 Bootrec may not find Windows 7. But if what happened to me, happened to you, Windows 8 overwrote the Windows 7 Bootloader with that GUI. So reparing with /ScanOS fixed Windows 8 and now I have a usable dual boot.

Thanks Weapon. I can boot Windows 8 into Safe Mode with Command Prompt no problem, and I have the DVD to boot from also. I'll give it a try but if the MBR was corrupt I wouldn't be able to boot in to Safe mode would I?

I could also run these commands from Win 7 cmd prompt and see what comes up. Both drives are installed.

"/FixMBR" is just something I run just to make sure, you can bypass that and just try "/Scanos"

You guys, it was the stupidest problem. I think. After trying all the bootrec stuff from cmd prompt, I booted into Safe Mode, and ran the Refresh Your PC utility from within Windows (it prompted me for the DVD to replace missing files.)

After that, the problem still occurred. So I booted to Safe Mode again and was just messing around. When I went to Personalize the blank green screen popped up again and it suddenly occurred to me that I have an HDMI cord hooked up running to my HDTV. I use it for Steam Big Picture Mode from Win7. I NEVER did anything to OK or set extended desktop displays or picked the HDTV as the main display in Win8; it must have automatically decided to put itself on the bigger screen at some point. Sure enough I flipped through my HDTV inputs and up pops the Windows 8 desktop on my HDTV! Ack! The least Windows 8 could do is display an empty desktop with the selected style (I have the default swoosh currently) instead of just a blank color on the extended desktop.

benPDX said:

You guys, it was the stupidest problem. I think. After trying all the bootrec stuff from cmd prompt, I booted into Safe Mode, and ran the Refresh Your PC utility from within Windows (it prompted me for the DVD to replace missing files.)

After that, the problem still occurred. So I booted to Safe Mode again and was just messing around. When I went to Personalize the blank green screen popped up again and it suddenly occurred to me that I have an HDMI cord hooked up running to my HDTV. I use it for Steam Big Picture Mode from Win7. I NEVER did anything to OK or set extended desktop displays or picked the HDTV as the main display in Win8; it must have automatically decided to put itself on the bigger screen at some point. Sure enough I flipped through my HDTV inputs and up pops the Windows 8 desktop on my HDTV! Ack! The least Windows 8 could do is display an empty desktop with the selected style (I have the default swoosh currently) instead of just a blank color on the extended desktop.

Click to expand...

I have just registered on this site to say thank you, and I too did the same idiotic thing. I have been fighting with this for 3 hours, when it turns out it was just sending the login screen to my TV which is turned off atm...

THANKS!!!!

If you weren't also using purple as your customized colour I don't know if I'd ever have found this....

PURPLE RULES!

That's awesome! Thanks for making a profile just to comment on that. Lol. Glad you were able to solve the problem too. PURPLE4LYFE!

Ohh, dear.
I made the exactly the same mistake.
And also i registered just for this.

Love u guys. Peace