Ok, I tried installing Ubuntu 12.10 and when installing I went to click on Something Else to install to a pre-made partition but when I clicked on continue I realised I either missed (don't laugh) or the mouse didn't click properly but it went straight to formatting and trying to do a complete install. Luckily just as it started formatting there was an error and in my panic I didn't think to write it down. After exiting the installer I checked to see if my windows partition was still ok, thankfully it was and I could still see and access everything. I then re-started my laptop to try and boot back into windows 8.
No dice, I get the error Media Check [Fail] and I can now only boot up using Live Ubuntu, I tried installing Ubunutu on a seperate 8.5GB partition I had but no dice there either.
Tried using Boot-Repair and that failed as well but here is the Info Summary for it http://paste.ubuntu.com/5717818/
Is it possible to fix without using a Windows recovery disk? I just have to hunt around for one is all. Also it would be good to keep my files but it's not absolutely necessary.