I partitioned my hard drive and installed a second copy of my Windows 8.1
I like to experiment with registry settings, tweaks, etc so I use the second installation as a guiney pig, leaving my primary copy untouched.
My question is how to I get the second copy listed on the graphical Boot Options Menu? Right now, I have to press [ESC] on reboot to select it in BIOS settings.
my OS is Windows 8.1 64-bit. It boots just fine, but I suddenly found out that something wrong happened with my BCD store. Tried more workarounds but none worked. The last I found How To Restore Windows 8 Boot Options Menu ended on bcdedit error mentioned below. The problem indicates with following signs:
- bcdedit /enum prints error "The boot configuration data store could not be opened."
- bcdboot C:windows prints error "BFSVC Error: BcdOpenSystemStore failed with unexpected error code, Status
= [c000015c]"
- msconfig's boot tab shows empty OSes list (nothing on the tab is clickablle)
- the same with System Properties, Advanced tab, Startup and Restore dialog (OS dropdown has no entries)
- Trying to enter diagnostic boot by Shft + Restart doesnot seem to offer full recovery menu. It boots to GUI boot menu offering Continue or Troubleshooting, Troubleshooting submenu offers Manage UEFI options (this brings me to BIOS setup after reboot) and Shut down. No manage boot options, no other choices.
All of this point me to that my booting configuration is somehow ill (I wonder a bit that Windows still can start).
Been running this system since 2010 win7 and upgraded to win 8.
When I switched over to win 8 I also bought an ssd drive (C) and it seemed to be working fine ever since.
I recently bought a couple 3TB drives and wanted to replace the old HDD (F), installed the drives, transferred all data off F and then shut down the pc. I took F out of the pc and it won't boot.
Going from loads of tutorials on here I found that F was listed as active and a system drive.
Any attempts at making it inactive and activating C resulted in nothing. I used my startup repair disc but there was no OS listed to repair??
Whenever C is active and F inactive, I've no options at all with startup repair.
Currently I have dual boot Windows 7 & 8 on my 500GB SATA HDD.
I am planning of installing/adding new 1TB SATA HDD.
How to I copy the dual boot Windows 7 & 8 from the 500GB HDD to the 1TB HDD (My plan is to use the 500 GB HDD as data files back-up only)
i want to copy my C: to new HDD. i also want to put the bootfiles in separate Boot-partition in new HDD. the boot-files are currently together with windows partition in C: in old HDD.
How can i copy my current windows to work on new HDD and also the bootfiles in separate partition?
I have installed Blue 8.1 on a separate drive in my system along side 8.0. When I restart the 8.0 boots unless I manually select the 8.1 drive in bios. How can I alter the Boot menu to add the option to boot from either OS?
View 3 Replies View RelatedSo I am here trying to downgrade my Windows 8 laptop to Windows 7. (It is an ASUS X55U by the way)
Every time I go to advanced startup settings it doesn't show the troubleshoot option, only the Continue and Turn Off Your PC options. I've tried everything and the option won't appear.
I have an older Dell laptop with no secure boot that has Windows 8.1. I shrank the partition and installed Linux for a dual boot setup. Normally I install the GRUB2 to the root of the Linux partition so I don't "see" the Linux installation at all until I use easybcd to create a boot menu item. Easybcd wipes out the pretty blue GUI boot screen and you end up with the black and white "legacy" menu. This was all expected.
Now the weird part. Sometimes when I boot the computer I get the black and white boot screen and sometimes I get the modern GUI boot screen. I prefer the black and white boot screen because the modern boot screen does a second reboot when you select a linux installation.
I have a desktop PC Acer XC600, the hard disk is formatted in the UEFI-Scheme. Now I want to do a clean install of a fresh Windows 8, but I cannot manage to boot into UEFI-mode, neither from DVD or USB.
I can reach a boot menu by pressing F12, but there is nothing like shown in the article about installing Windows 8 in UEFI mode. Only standard bios devices show up. There are simply no UEFI devices. I tried different usb sticks, dvds, formatted them different ways, but the best I can get is the point where setup says "cannot install because the disk is formatted GPT".
But the acutal system is definitely running in UEFI mode (?)
I am trying to Boot to Boot Menu so I can select CD rom so i can Ghost image my wife win 8 laptop, the problem is Win 8 wont let me access the boot menu and i am not sure what to do. The brand new Laptop came with HHD and i want to capture the image via Ghost and then put the Ghost image in SSD ...
Laptop is : Lenovo G505
I would like to use an extra partition in order to install Windows 8.
I already have XP and Windows 7 x64 in dual boot and can choose the OS using the arrows keys.
If I install Win 8, I will en up with the win 8 GUI at boot.
Is there a way to avoid this and "downgrade" to the old Dos presentation, and let me choose the OS using the keyboard up and down key.. ?
Is there any sort of advanced options when a file conflict is encountered when copying files? The "Skip x file(s) with the same date and size" option is nice, but I'd often like to skip files which only have the same size and the date may be the same or different - it's unimportant. Is there any way to do this? It would also be nice if, when copying a folder for example, it would display specifically which file was being transferred at the time.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI want to copy windows 8.1 from one PC to another and then delete it from the first PC. How do I do this?
View 4 Replies View Relatedi installed monitoring and filtering software on the computer. my kids just restarted the computer and choose refresh and it was gone. in win 7 i set a new restore point and deleted the previous ones solving that problem. i know that there is a way to not allow using the system refresh with group policy and regedit hacks but i would not like to have to go down that road.
how can i control what the restore and refresh settings do?
My new PC should arrive today(7/3) or on sunday(7/6),i want to install my OS(Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64bit) on it.
I just don't want to spend time downloading & installing all the Windows Updates,so any way to copy my current OS at it's updated state so i could install on new PC?
Is there any way to install Windows 8 over an eval copy? I don't want to lose my programs.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI read the tutorial on building a Windows EFI USB stick from the Windows ISO. I want to build an EFI/USB from an ISO of a bootable third party application, which is not designed to boot from UEFI. First, I went through the steps in Diskpart. Then, I copied the files from the third party ISO to the USB stick. Screenshot 34 shows the objects listed from the third party ISO. The second screenshot (35) shows what I have on my Win 8.1 ISO. I tried to just copy the efi folder and bootmgr files from the Win 8 ISO, but my Win 8 system (a VM) didn't like that at all. !
View 2 Replies View RelatedCurrently running WinXP, meets all requirement for Windows 8. However, when I try to copy the ISO file to USB using Win7 DVD download tool to create a bootable USB device, the USB I'm trying to copy it to will not show up in the list of "Devices to Copy In".
I have tried this several times with 2 different USB drives, both 8GB, one with more than 4GB free and the another is completely empty. They both work perfectly well, but when I reach the screen with the list of devices to copy the ISO file on to (Step 3 of 4, Win7 USB/DVD Download Tool) they don't show up on the list despite re-inserting them and refreshing a couple hundred times. The only removable device that does show up is the Floppy Disk.
I am using the DVD is not an option, since my DVD player crashed last week and I don't have the time to get it fixed right now, and I'd really like to get Windows 8 installed as soon as possible.
I upgraded my computer's OS from W7 to Windows 8 some months ago. Not long after, I upgraded to the preview of the Windows 8.1 Pro. My Windows-license is legit, bought and valid. However, when I returned from my christmas holiday, I noticed the message in picture #2. Fair enough, I thought and proceeded forth.
Clicking 'Get Windows' got me to the screen pictured at #3. Oddly enough, I am unable to click any of the buttons, including Download, Home, Your apps and Your account. I can access the links further down on the page (which aren't included in this screencap) but for some reason I can't press anything else.
When I've tried to access the Windows 8 Store before this problem arised, even before I installed Windows 8.1, I have literally never been able to access the Windows 8 Store (See picture #1).
How do I go from here? I would like to register the Windows 8.1 ...
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I have purchased 2 identical Acer V5-serie (OEM Windows 8.1) . I have setup the first computer (removed McAfee, done setup changes in Windows 8.1, installed freeware programs, etc). Windows 8.1 (OEM) was activated automatically when connecting to internet.
1) Can I "clone" the first computer, create a "Rescue Media" , create a recovery backup, .... or something similar in order to transfer the setup and programs from computer A to computer B ?
On the second PC I'm going to replace the HDD with a SSD
2) Do I need to avtivate Windows 8.1 om computer B first ?
3) I have installed Office 2010 professional plus , it's not activated yet (do I need to ? )
What happens if I choose not to activate it ?
I’m experiencing this odd and selective issue of options missing from folder context menu, under the choice New in most folders. Certain folders seems to have all the options as should. Down's a pic of a usual situation and the rare occasion of full menu, with Finish OS.
A quick scoop around indicates that the few folders to have full options on drive C are Desktop and Program Data. Some seemingly random folders on other drives also provides the full menu, but most only the option for New folder. This has bugged me to a good degree lately and while doing so unnecessarily hindered my desktop work.
I'm running Windows 8 Pro x64 (non 8.1) with Start8 (v1.16).
So recently I was switching my desktop background repeatedly, trying out a few images because i wanted to change it. I had been using the right click menu on images, using the available option to 'set as desktop background'. Then, for no apparent reason that option dissapeared, along with the bolded 'open', 'edit', and 'print' options. not only that, but it seems to have slightly rearranged the menu as well as added a few new 'options' that do absolutely nothing when i try to use them.
Preview, rotate right, and rotate left do nothing whatsoever. Open would have opened it in an image viewer i downloaded and set to default, and edit would have opened it in Paint. Images aren't the only things affected. it seems to have happened to .txt files and video files, except the preview and rotate options don't appear.
I can still double click to open these files in their default programs, and use the newly bolded 'open with' drop-down menu to open image sin paint, but it would be nice to have my normal options back.
I've got LATITUDE E7440 laptop with Win 8 Pro preinstalled. I need to disable driver signature enforcement in advanced options. I've read about how to do it in many places, but basically.. when I go to Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> Startup Settings
And I push restart, menu for type of booting (below) doesn't appear. It just restarts as usual. Can I get to this menu in another way or why it doesn't appear?
I've got 4 laptops and this menu appeared only on one of them after restart. I've even reset it to its factory settings, but it didn't work out for me.
Usually, Windows 8.1 advanced startup options -> troubleshoot menu should be .....
But my troubleshoot->advanced options only have UEFI Firmware and Startup Settings ....
I have to use command prompt ....
I just got a refurbished ASUS K75DE laptop, and it came with Windows 8 on it. I am wanting to run a dual boot with Win7, so I disabled fast-boot just fine, and went into the UEFI BIOS and disabled the secure boot.
While I was there, I did like I have always done and set a BIOS boot-up password. I then proceed to boot to my Win7 installer USB Flash drive, but I was running low on battery power so I aborted the install and shut the computer down to try again later.
Now however when I get into BIOS to select boot priority, all options are grayed out except for system time and a few other non-essentials. At the bottom of the first BIOS screen it says "User Level : User" and I can't seem to find a way to reverse this issue. So now I'm stuck, can't boot to anything but the HDD because it is first by default.
I've had Win 7 Pro on my laptop for over a year. I installed a 2nd hard drive to it recently and today I installed Windows 8 Pro on the 2nd hard drive. It's been a roller coaster of good & bad luck.
The first install went fine, until I tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Windows store, then things went bad and I had to go into Windows 7 and eventually delete the Windows 8 volume and change it from MBR to GPT because of UEFI (no secure boot enabled). What a stretch of error messages telling me I can't install Windows 8 on the blank hard drive because it was or wasn't MBR or GPT, or the automagically made partitions weren't in the right order.
After spending over 7 hours twice in a row installing Windows 8, I finally find out that there's no boot option for Windows 7 anymore.
The only clue I have is to use a Windows 7 repair disk and use diskpart.exe and make the Win 7 drive "active" but that's a little foreign to me at this point.
I'm looking in Computer Management / Disk Management from within Windows 8.
Disk 0: SYSTEM D: 438 MB NTFS (lengthened from 199 MB with EaseUS because Acronis 2014 thought it too small while crashing), Healthy (Active, Primary Partition); Win 7 E: 930.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition); HP_TOOLS F: 102 MB FAT 32 Healthy (Primary Partition)
Disk 1: 300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) {no letter}; 100 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition) {no letter}; C: 931.00 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
And several other external disks which don't deserve mention today.
I have been using Windows 7 Pro (64) for several years, and today installed a newly purchased Windows 8 Pro (64) OS. I looked on-line and found many articles on how to multi-boot back to Windows 7 after installing Windows 8, and believe I have done this correctly (more below), but when booting up I do not ever see a multi-boot menu, my system boots directly into Windows 8.
When installing Win 8, I booted from my CD/DVD drive with the Win 8 OS media in the drive. (I had previously reduced the volume of my Windows 7 drive and created a new partition that I called "Windows8". ). At the appropriate time in the Win 8 install I chose "Custom", then chose the newly created "Windows 8" partition, then proceeded with the Win 8 OS install. As mentioned above, I do not see the multi-boot menu when booting up, however when in Windows 8 I can see the Windows 7 drive in "Computer", so it was not over-written.
Startup Options - Choose a Default OS to Run at Startup in Windows 8
and am wondering if I should try Options 2 through 4 (1 of)? I build my own PCs so know something about PC's, bt not much about booting to an OS.....
Another options might be installing a third party boot manager, which I have not yet done.
my reason for getting back to Win 7 is to be able to use the PC while I learn and setup Win 8 over time. I went into this believing that getting a multi-boot capability would be very easy.
Is it possible to change the way win 7 looks,such as the lack of the start button,and the applications as they are in win7 from the start button?
The Windows 8 came with the laptop. The only reason I am interested in Windows 8 is bitlocker.That is probably the only feature I am interested in.
I have a multiple operating system and used to get the blue graphical boot menu with a rectangle with the name of each operating system in it. After a few boots it went back to the text menu, and only returned a couple of times. Is there a way to get the graphical boot menu back permanently? It looks a lot nicer. I have XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 .....
View 6 Replies View RelatedFirst, some context: I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE that came with Windows 8.
I've managed to get a working dual-boot system with Ubuntu 12.10. I can't remember exactly how I done that, but I remember that I had to disable secure boot. I think that the boot configuration those days was:
Secure boot: DisabledLoad legacy option rom: EnabledBoot list option: Legacy
This "configuration" worked perfectly for 6-7 months.
Then, one day (last week, can't remember the exact day), when I was using Windows 8 the computer crashed. I hard-rebooted and got this screen:
After executed boot-repair from a Ubuntu LiveCD dozens of times I've decided to eliminate Ubuntu temporarily and focus to get a system with Windows 8 working nice.
Then I used my recovery DVDs to recover the system. Yup, Windows has booted. But when I restarted first time I got the same error. Then I, digging a solution, pressed F12 after a reboot and got here:
The highlighted option allows me to boot into Windows 8. So I went to boot options (F2) and changed the following configuration:
Load legacy option rom: DisabledBoot list option: UEFI
Now I can boot directly to Windows without need to press F12.
But my objective isn't complete. I want to erase all Ubuntu entries from the seconds image and restore the legacy boot from the first imagem (because they worked before).
I did two things:
I erased all partitions related to Ubuntu (root partition and home partition).I created a Windows recovery disk (not a system recovery disk).
I used the recovery disk to run the automatic recovery procedure (I forgot the exactly name). I've runned it at least 10 times with no success. Then I went to command prompt to try the famous triad: bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /rebuildbcd. Still, no solution.
After creating a UEFI bootable USB thumb drive with Rufus (using Windows 8.1 Enterprise ISO x64), for a Dell Optiplex 3010 (configured as UEFI only, no CSM, latest firmware version, Windows 8 installed), I didn't see a USB boot option, so I tried to add one manually. Unfortunately I erased the existing boot option (boot manager) by mistake. Although there were two boot options for PXE booting, the machine will not start anymore, even when there is an active WDS server on the network.
I also see Led's 2 and 3 lighting up, meaning according to the manual 'hardware ok but bios possibly damaged/corrupt'.
I understand I cannot start the machine from a bios boot disk because of GPT partitioning, and the UEFI USB boot disk I made might be corrupt (as it didn't show up as a boot option), however I don't understand why it won't boot from the PXE network card, as these boot options are still there.