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I just bought a Lenovo ideaPad Z400. I installed the ubuntu 13.04 without problem. Now, I cna't boot the windows 8. Eaither in secure boot mode enabled or disabled. I am frustrated. this is my boot-repair auto generated file. http://paste.ubuntu.com/5645521/

In the grub boot menu, there are several options, Windows 8 loader, WIndows 8 recovery UEFi. I can get into windows 8 with recovery UEFI. However, the regular windows 8 doesn't work. And I don't know what's the difference between these two windows mode and if there is any solution to solve.

If I load regular windows 8, it tells me no drivemap command found, and invalid efi ...

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  • There seems to be problems with newer laptops that come with preinstalled Windows 8 and EFI bootloaders. GRUB2 doesn't seem to do the job. Looking forward to see the answer.
    – user85164
    May 8, 2013 at 19:09
  • This [post on AskUbuntu.com][1] seems to tackle your problem. [1]: askubuntu.com/questions/233687/…
    – user85164
    May 8, 2013 at 19:14
  • It seems to work, however, I am not familiar with the ESP. So I haven't tried yet. Is my ESP gpt2?
    – ZhijieWang
    May 9, 2013 at 20:43

1 Answer 1

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If I understand correctly, the GRUB option called "Windows UEFI recovery bkpbootmgfw.efi" does boot Windows, but you've got additional GRUB entries that don't work. If so, that's working the way it's supposed to work -- or at least, the way the Boot Repair tool is supposed to set things up. (It's not a very good solution, and I have more to say on the subject on my Web page. This is a problem with labels and with having too many options, not with an inability to boot Windows. If I understand correctly, the simplest solution is to ignore the issue and just use the awkwardly-named Windows boot option. There are several other options, though. Two that are relatively easy are:

  • Use a tool called GRUB 2 Customizer to adjust the GRUB menu entries. I've never used this tool, though, so I can't provide further guidance on it.
  • Re-run the Boot Repair tool, click Advanced Options, click Restore EFI Backups, and click Apply. After doing this, install my rEFInd boot manager. This often does a better job launching Windows than GRUB does; however, it may have an extra boot option or two that you'll want to get rid of using rEFInd's own methods -- either deleting the offending files or using the dont_scan_dirs or dont_scan_files options in /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf.

If I've completely misunderstood your post and you can't boot Windows from GRUB, then the first of these solutions won't do you any good -- at least, not without better understanding the problem and having a replacement GRUB boot stanza for Windows. The second solution might work, but if I've misunderstood, I recommend you post a clarification and wait for further responses before proceeding.

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  • Windows UEFI recovery bkpbootmgfw.efi doesn't boot normally, it boots the recovery system, which if I proceed, will covert the laptop to a clean installed.
    – ZhijieWang
    May 9, 2013 at 20:35

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