startup repair just goes on forever

burntham said:

After fiddling around with ubuntu and OS booting stuff, I managed to currupt my master boot record before powering down my pc (running windows 8 pro x64)

I booted with the windows 8 disc and none of the options were helpful (same hdd locked problem).

I managed to fix this by running repair (instead of install) from a windows 7 disc - it seems the windows 7 disc can remove the lock.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a sound solution, but it doesn't work for me. The startup repair just goes on forever, and ever, and ever and never does anything. If I don't disable secure boot and EUFI, it doesn't even go all the way into Windows 7 setup. It just sits there at the "Starting Windows" screeen forever.

Sonic98 said:

This sounds like a sound solution, but it doesn't work for me. The startup repair just goes on forever, and ever, and ever and never does anything. If I don't disable secure boot and EUFI, it doesn't even go all the way into Windows 7 setup. It just sits there at the "Starting Windows" screeen forever.

Click to expand...

In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 8 Repair CD/DVD/USB in UEFI mode.

theog said:

Sonic98 said:

This sounds like a sound solution, but it doesn't work for me. The startup repair just goes on forever, and ever, and ever and never does anything. If I don't disable secure boot and EUFI, it doesn't even go all the way into Windows 7 setup. It just sits there at the "Starting Windows" screeen forever.

Click to expand...

In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 8 Repair CD/DVD/USB in UEFI mode.

Click to expand...

I was looking at the solution that said use as Windows 7 disc. Like everyone else the Windows 8 USB drive was no use

Sonic98 said:

theog said:

Sonic98 said:

This sounds like a sound solution, but it doesn't work for me. The startup repair just goes on forever, and ever, and ever and never does anything. If I don't disable secure boot and EUFI, it doesn't even go all the way into Windows 7 setup. It just sits there at the "Starting Windows" screeen forever.

Click to expand...

In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 8 Repair CD/DVD/USB in UEFI mode.

Click to expand...

I was looking at the solution that said use as Windows 7 disc. Like everyone else the Windows 8 USB drive was no use

Click to expand...

or
In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 7 x64 Repair CD/DVD/[DEL]USB[/DEL] in UEFI mode.

theog said:

Sonic98 said:

theog said:

In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 8 Repair CD/DVD/USB in UEFI mode.

Click to expand...

I was looking at the solution that said use as Windows 7 disc. Like everyone else the Windows 8 USB drive was no use

Click to expand...

or
In your case, it will not work as you are not booting the Windows 7 x64 Repair CD/DVD/[DEL]USB[/DEL] in UEFI mode.

Click to expand...

This person forgot their password once, and I had to make a Windows 8 recovery USB. I t hink I'll try to re-format it was a UEFI Windows 7 bootable USB and see what that does.

. I t hink I'll try to re-format it was a UEFI Windows 7 bootable USB and see what that does.

Click to expand...

If Using a USB Pendrive on a PC with a uEFI BIOS.
USB Pendrive need to be formated to FAT32 as in
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html
Take note of Step 11 for Windows 7.
Also you will need to use a USB 2.0 port, as there are no USB 3.0 drivers in Windows 7.

I tried this by doing step 11 and skipping step 11 and I still get the error message regarding BCD

1. Insert your Windows Installation Disc and Restart the Computer
2. Choose Language
3. CLick Repair

Info: An error occured while attempting to read the boot configuation data.

I guess I'll have to try making the USB drive again

Ok I put the drive into the laptop I'm testing 8.1 on. I went to the boot menu and chose UEFI boot. I was able to get to the Windows 7 installation screen. Of course I tried to do a repair but it gave me some message about this startup repair not being for this version of Windows. So, the drive has worked on another system

Sonic98 said:

burntham said:

After fiddling around with ubuntu and OS booting stuff, I managed to currupt my master boot record before powering down my pc (running windows 8 pro x64)

I booted with the windows 8 disc and none of the options were helpful (same hdd locked problem).

I managed to fix this by running repair (instead of install) from a windows 7 disc - it seems the windows 7 disc can remove the lock.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a sound solution, but it doesn't work for me. The startup repair just goes on forever, and ever, and ever and never does anything. If I don't disable secure boot and EUFI, it doesn't even go all the way into Windows 7 setup. It just sits there at the "Starting Windows" screeen forever.

Click to expand...

Usually, when "Startup Repair" goes on forever, it is possible that the hard disk has developed errors.

I would not use the Windows 7 Install disk to try to repair Windows 8 Boot, I asked he guy who was suggesting this and he never got back to me. I suggested it to someone once and they said when they tried it it returned an error "OS Not Supported" or "Wrong OS"- I see this happened to you. Forget that, it won't work.

So it's better to use a Hard Drive scan utility like GWscan to scan the whole hard drive from outside of Windows, Hiren's boot CD has just about every OEM disk scanning utility there is. Boot to the disk with the Disk Scanning programs, and run a full disk check and make sure there are not Read Errors. The Scanning utility will offer to repair it, do that if prompted.

After that, boot to the Windows 8 Install disk and go into a command prompt and run "Bootrec /fixmbr" and then "Bootrec /scanos" and it will find your Windows 8 and put it back in it's place. But it's a good bet you have a bad spot on your hard drive, because the Windows 8 "Auto Diagnostics" should not take longer than an hour to run, if even that long.