Solved Windows 8.1 dual boot but now stops at menu

[Aksarben]

Starting this thread per suggestion of Admin. Will cut and paste from another alternate thread:

I have a dual boot system, a desktop PC I built myself. 3 ea 1TB hard drives and Windows XP Pro resides on the drive 0 as C:\ logical partition of drive 0 has D:\ as well as F:\ F: is the partition that has my Windows 8.1 PRO installation, that, until recently, has worked great. I could dual boot between either 8.1 PRO or the "earlier operating system" which was XP PRO. I have some software and setups on XP that are/can only be used in xp. Some aren't even available anymore.

The other day I turn on my monitor and Windows 8.1 was "hung" so I tried to push 'sleep' on my keyboard and then bring it out of sleep to see if that would bring back the video. No luck, so I shut it down and restarted. Ever since I get the boot menu that lists 8.1 and "earlier operating system (XP)" and I can boot right into XP with no issues. It is when I try to boot into 8.1 pro that I have the problems. It simply won't go/boot into the 8.1. I see the partition in my XP OS it's there and seems intact. (logical drive) and there are many programs I have installed in it including Classic Shell.

I have my Windows 8.1 pro DVD. Is there any way possible I can use it to do a repair/install and keep the registry and installed files on my 8.1 PRO operating system?

Again, I cannot boot into the Windows 8.1 PRO OS . All boot drivers appear to be current and working. The partition 8.1 is on is also re-marked as Primary (from logical) but I have not made it "active" only the XP PRO installation partition is "active"

I would caution others: I would HIGHLY SUGGEST that you do not push the sleep button on your keyboard if your Windows 8.1 has crashed. I have had it freeze on me recently, and merely pushed the power button until the PC shut down. Then I would restart it again and 8.1 PRO would come up. This time I hit the sleep button on the keyboard and the computer shut down/hibernated and when I pushed the power button it came out of sleep. It is imperative that if you dual boot that the power setting for 'Enable Fast Startup" be unchecked as that uses a cache or ram to restart Windows 8.1 faster. But, in dual booting, it can very often cause file and folder corruption.

Any thoughts on how I might be able to repair the booting into Windows 8.1?

 

[lifetec]

It looks like that your bootloader is corrupted.
You could try to remake your bootloader with this tutorial.
https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/dual-boot/windows-xp/installing-second/

Start from Setting up the Dual-Boot

If this will not work, then look here https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/tips-and-tricks/recovering-windows-bootloader/
Type 1 is the one i mentioned above. There are a few more if type 1 does not work.

 

[Aksarben]

* (EDIT) Neosmart Technologies refunded me the money as of 12/18/15. Just wanted to edit to say that they stood good by their word.

I actually paid $19.75 and downloaded their Easy Recovery Essentials, and ISO and burned to a CD. Booted into it. Ran their repair program. Now, before I had XP Pro that I could boot into on my C: drive and Windows 8.1 I could not boot into on the F: drive. After the "fix" from them I could not boot into Windows 8.1 and neither could I boot into XP. Looking at things with my Avenquest Partition Manager 11 boot disk I see that my C: was formatted, which essentially wiped out my Windows XP and all it's settings and programs. 8.1 would not boot either after all that. So, I spent money, thinking it might save me a lot of time, and ended up deleting all partitions on that particular drive and having to clone the saved drive back onto it so I could get back into Windows XP once again.

I installed Windows 8.1 the right way, after I had been using Windows XP Pro for many years. I had created a new partiton, and once upon a time I had Windows 10 Preview in there. Booting back and forth was simple and good. Either one would boot. Then, when I bought the Windows 8.1 PRO DVD I deleted the partition and now had empty space which I used to install Windows 81. PRO into. That was back in March of 2015 if I recall. Many times I have booted back and forth from one OS to the other after that time. It kept the Virus signature on my AV program up to date in Windows XP. Until recently I had no issues at all booting between either XP or Windows 8.1 Now I get the boot menu that comes up, and if I choose "Earlier Windows System" I get Windows XP. If I choose Windows 8.1 at that boot menu screen, I get a blank screen for no matter how long I leave it running.

I bought the earlier Easy Recovery Essentials aka Easy RE with their wording on their site saying it would work, guaranteed, or your money back. And, I did get a full refund back to my payal account.

 

[Aksarben]

I am surprised that there has not been a work around to use the Windows 8.1 DVD at boot for doing a "windows repair" like there was in Windows XP. ?

 

[lifetec]

Which partitionstyle did you use for your windows 8.1 install on your HDD GPT or MBR.

Windows 8 or 8.1 is unable to boot from a GPT drive on UEFI-enabled devices - if you formatted or converted your system drive from MBR partitioning to GPT, you must ensure the EFI boot options state "UEFI only". Windows 8 and 8.1 require UEFI for GPT drives, this is a must and there is no workaround.
In old BIOS mode, Windows 8/8.1 will not detect your GPT hard drives or partitions correctly. No booting, no Refresh Your PC or Reset Your PC until "UEFI only" is set.

 

[Aksarben]

MBR. I have BIOS on my Asus motherboard. I had this drive cloned from one I have had for several years. Single 1Tb drive with C: Windows (XP) Primary. D:/ drive is formatted Fat32 like the C: drive and it is a logical drive. The F:/Window (8.1) I formatted as NTFS as a primary drive. I had installed 8.1 on it sometime spring of 2015 and was always able to boot either into it, or into XP. These drives are not GPT drives.

Motherboard is an ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. It has 2 SATA connections and 1 IDE connection. Up to 16GB Ram - 4 slots
Original os is Windows XP Pro SP3 and I slipstreamed many of the updates that had come out after SP3 and were updated. Got that from a download I found on the internet. I actually was hesitant at installing 8.1 since XP was running so marvelous on my desktop. I installed it to get a grasp of 8.1 so I might help others at work with their issues, and configurations, as they arose. Since I installed it as a dual boot, I booted more into XP at the beginning than I did later. At work, they skipped updating from XP and went straight to Windows 10, which I am not fully happy with (windows 10) .

Recently I would get a frozen screen and would simply turn off and restart. No issues getting back into 8.1. Then I tried to "sleep" the computer to get it out of the frozen state. Therein, I believe, was my mistake.

 

[Aksarben]

Secure boot?

I am just wondering now if somehow the secure boot might have gotten corrupt? This is an older ASUS Motherboard M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 with BIOS. Now, I'm thinking it is Award BIOS, but not sure that because of the Windows 8.1 pro installation on another part of the partition Drive 0 that it uses UEFI or GPT in any part of the partitions.

I have noticed that normal XP computers do NOT have a "BOOT" hidden folder in their C:\ drive This one does, as does my wife's (same motherboard) and at work my Windows 10 computer, (that also dual boots into XP) also has the hidden folder in the root called BOOT. inside of boot is a file called BCD, as well as numerous sub folders indicating the language. Apparently this is placed inside the XP C: drive when one installs Windows 8.1 into another partition.

Just kicking some thoughts around... Maybe still fixable.. or just install over the old 8.1 in that partition after I have saved some of the files I wanted. Too bad I cannot at least save a portion of my registry I had in there. There was one program that took a while to configure each account for my emails.

 

[Aksarben]

I solved it...sort of. Just reinstalled in the partition without formatting first Saved the prior in Windows.old. I had saved many of the files/folders and shortcuts on me "E:" drive in a folder I created to put things back. Seemed to work well. Just lots of programs to re-install now. Buggers!!