idakan said:
Yesterday, I installed 9.2-Release onto my Dell inspiron laptop. Install went fine.
When I rebooted, I was (and still am) unable to boot into Windows 8 because of a corrupt bcd.
I've been running FreeBSD for many years and never had anything like this happen.
This laptop is UEFI and has secure boot. I changed to legacy mode to install FreeBSD, and then went back to uefi and secure boot to boot into Windows.
I used gpt to install FreeBSD also.
I can get into FreeBSD via my SuperGrub2 disk, but not Windows, because of the corrupt bcd.
Any ideas how to repair it? I don't have a Windows cd yet, since this is a new laptop.
I tried searching here and via google, but didn't turn up anything w/o windows cd.
http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader
It's not going to be pleasant. If you can find a Windows 8 PE image you hopefully can follow above. There are packages on the net that have "freeware" PE images, if you trust them. Getting one direct from Microsoft will be difficult, if you can provide authenticity, maybe the right tech will throw you a bone if you call them, but that may be optimistic. Other option is to find a Windows 8 install disk, and pick drop to command prompt, then follow as above.
I think UEFI Secure is not required for windows 8 to function, it is just recommended. I Seem to recall reading an article with MS stating they will not block dual booting, but thought they stated secure boot had to be disabled. As already stated FreeBSD is not going to be "secured", not sure how Windows plays with insecure boot target found, but MS typically doesn't play nice.
Once windows is restored, you'll have to use BCDEDIT to add the FreeBSD system to the Windows bootloader, I don't believe there is any option. This requires a
dd(1) of the bootcode (possibly just the correct bootloader code from
/boot, never tried) or I think windows BCD can chainload partitions it can see. I've heard windows 8 will install on GPT but haven't tried yet. I don't use windows much, but know Vista was a bear.
Not sure if grub would work, I found surrendering and using BCDEDIT isn't that horrible once you get the hang of it, and MS doesn't seem to like anything but their boot menu, at least from my experience. You just can't usually make changes to a running system, so when you get going again at least make a PE image for yourself using their kit (need a base running system or it won't work used to call AIK) I've found Grub2 to be harder to use then MS's loader.
