Partitions corrupt, cant boot

Epicblood

New Member
Messages
6
Hello all,
I recently thought it would be a good idea to install Kali on a second partition of my laptop as I am trying to learn network security / pen testing.
Everything went fine at beginning, boot onto the live USB and install the thing. After it is all installed (including GRUB bootloader) I can no longer boot windows, no worries though, this is a common thing and a seemingly easy fix.
I cant remember teh exact solution, but it was using testDisk and fixing the MBR.

After doing this, I restart and can no longer boot into either Kali or Win 8.
I get an
"An operating system wasn't found. try disconnecting any drives that dont contain an operating system.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

I have tried booting onto a recovery drive, and running startup repair. This did not work (get windows was unable to repair..."
I have tried bootrec /fixmbr bootrec /fixboot bootrec /fixbcd bootrec /scanos
the last to return that 0 windows installs were found.
I have tried Boot-repair-disk which did not work, but seems to have gathered some valuable info:
paste.ubuntu.com/6829829
paste.ubuntu.com/6829838

I have a debian (Kali) live USB that I can boot into and connect to internet with, and a working win 8 recovery USB.

its fine if I lose the kali partition with repairs, but would hate to loose my windows as I have a ton of school/work things on there and it would be a huge pain to have to backup/restore those first.

Also, I have 2 different hardrives, a 1tb internal HDD that came with laptop (home of Kali), and a kingston SSD that houses my windows 8

windows recovery and live usb are on 2 different USBs.
The SSD that houses my windows partition is easily removable, the internal HDD is not.

If you need more info, please let me know.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 / Kali
By default W8 uses GPT partitions, not the old MBR type. Fixmbr will blindly write an MBR to the first sector on the disk. That is likely the "corruption" the system sees. My inclination, if you don't have a system image you can restore, would be to get Partition Wizard ISO freeware and burn a boot disc. Boot it and see if it will repair the GPT partitions.

There's always the chance another poster has been in this same situation. In that case it may be advisable to wait a bit. See if that person chimes in.

Also check grub. Often it saves the "MBR" sector. Perhaps it has an "undo" mechanism which may restore that sector of GPT info.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
As MilesAhead mentions, the Windows 8 install appears to have been in the UEFI configuration. I cannot really decipher the listing you attached, but it looks as though the other install added a special MBR to boot Linux in that configuration, and perhaps through your recovery attempts, the boot was reset.

So I will just ask a couple of simple questions. If you boot and open the Boot Device menu, what options to you show? While installing the other OS, did you make any changes to the bios which might effect being able to boot to UEFI or Legacy or both?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
Hello,
Using partition wizard I was able to restore my "lost" partitions which contained windows.
In response to Saltgrass, the options are the same as they were prior to linux install (UEFI and Legacy BIOS)

When I boot using UEFI and windows boot manager set at top of boot list, I get an error 0xc000025
Autorepair startup seems to not be fixing the problem as it hangs at attempting repairs for quite some time.

bootrec /scanos now shows my windows installation on D:\Windows
bootrec /FixBoot returns element not found
bootrec /RebuildBcd works until the prompt to add my OS to boot list, once I hit "Y", it returns element not found.

Am now running chkdsk on my drive.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 / Kali
More progress:
After running chkdsk and whatnot, I now get a more different error:
File: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 / Kali
Ubuntu can also run virtualbox

pull up terminal ctrl + alt + T

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

I can only boot from kali live usb atm, I want to get windows partition working properly before fixing or installing linux again.
I will probably end up just doing this on a different laptop.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 / Kali
Thanks for posting the solution.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
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