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Today I installed Ubuntu 14.10 alongside my Windows 7 installation. Unfortunately something seems to have broken and is now causing a boot loop for Windows 7:

I can boot Ubuntu perfectly fine and I can chose between Ubuntu and Windows Boot Manager from GRUB. But as soon as I select Windows, it says Windows is loading files... and then I'm back at GRUB.

I followed the following step-by-step guide during the install. I set up the partitions as follows:

  • / on SSD alongside Windows
  • /home and swap on separate HDD

I have already tried the following things to solve the problem:

  • run boot-repair with recommended settings (boot-repair pastebin)
  • a guide on how to resolve Windows boot-loops using Windows Recovery*
  • Windows start-up repair (ran it multiple times, fails multiple times, then says no errors found, but does not solve the problem)
  • fixboot and fixmbr in Windows recovery

*I can only post 2 links at the moment, so I'll leave this one out. Basically it involved copying registry backups from \windows\system32\config\RegBack to \windows\system32\config

What I did not try:

  • restore Drive backup and redo the whole process. Reason is, I can't boot up the usb recovery device (screen stays black when I try to boot from it)

Additionally, but probably somewhat unrelated: I had to boot up the Ubuntu Live session with the boot option nomodeset as otherwise the screen stayed black after GRUB (maybe this is related to the recovery device boot problem...).

Well, that's about as much information as I can recall for now. Any ideas on what I should try?

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  • Did you shrink the Windows partition to make space for Ubuntu? If so, did you shrink it with Windows tools or with the Ubuntu installer tools? Apr 9, 2015 at 2:31
  • I did so using the Windows tools
    – gargaroff
    Apr 9, 2015 at 9:49

1 Answer 1

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Judging from your grub.cfg file, it looks like you should be seeing three entries for Windows:

  • Windows UEFI bootmgfw.efi
  • Windows Boot UEFI loader
  • Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sdc1)

Please clarify which of those you've tried, and what the result is for each of them. In some cases, one option will work but others won't, in which case the appropriate thing to do is to ignore the non-functional options, or perhaps take steps to hide them. If you don't see all three of those options, then either I'm mis-reading your grub.cfg file or your GRUB is reading another grub.cfg than the one shown in your Boot Repair output. In the latter case, you might want to track down the file that's actually being read.

If none of those entries is working, then something is badly damaged. My recommendation in this case is to begin by undoing whatever Boot Repair has done. Re-launch the program and select the Advanced option to restore backup boot files. This should restore the original Windows boot files -- but given that you've already run Windows' own repair tools, it's unclear if this will help. If you needed to run Boot Repair to get Ubuntu working, then this may break Ubuntu's boot; but then you can work forward in a way that won't damage your Windows boot.

If at this point either Windows or Ubuntu doesn't boot, try the USB flash drive or CD-R version of my rEFInd boot manager. If it can boot both Windows and Ubuntu, install it via the PPA or Debian package, which should bypass GRUB entirely. If rEFInd itself launches but doesn't help you boot Windows, then at least you can be pretty sure that it's not a GRUB quirk, but that your Windows boot files are messed up. In this case, I suggest you look for a solution on a Windows forum. Although it was clearly something about the Ubuntu installation or Boot Repair that damaged the Windows files, repairing that damage will have to be done from Windows. (An exception is if you made a backup of your ESP before installing Ubuntu, in which case you can restore that, or at least its EFI/Microsoft directory tree, to fix the problem.)

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  • Hey there, thanks for the input. Unfortunately I saw your answer too late. You are right, I had those 3 entries and none of them worked. By now I was able to get the recovery usb to work (had to copy everything to a new one basically, the one I used simply was broken as it turned out). I restored the backup but it did not fix the boot problem. Now I face the error 0xc0000225. The backup restored the SSD completely (so Ubuntu is now gone), but something definitely is not right. Even in the BIOS/UEFI I can still select to boot from Ubuntu (but without anything to boot...)
    – gargaroff
    Apr 11, 2015 at 9:04
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    Googling produced a link to this question and answer, which may be relevant. Beyond that, please add a link to a fresh Boot Info Script output, since it's unclear what your current state is.
    – Rod Smith
    Apr 11, 2015 at 13:57

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