Deleted Windows bootmgr partition dual boot

Question

I seriously messed up my dual boot system.

I had windows 8 installed alongside Ubuntu 13.10, and everything was working fine with GRUB. I decided to get fancy and tried to install EasyBCD, but messed stuff up. Here is what I am working with:

401MB of Unformatted space
/dev/sda3 NTFS Windows Reserved space
/dev/sda4 NTFS Windows partition
/dev/sda5 ext4 Ubuntu partition
/dev/sda6 linux-swap

If I remember correctly, there was a fat32 partition in the Unformatted region, but I think I deleted it.

When I do update-grub on the Ubuntu partition, it does not even see the Windows 8 partition, because I think I deleted the bootmgr image.

I have both a Ubuntu install disc and a Windows 8.1 install disc.

Any help??

Answer 1

You have deleted your UEFI partition. It is a major pain, in my experience, to get it back. I would advise you to purchase a new hard drive, disconnect/take your old one out, and install fresh on to the new drive.

Install Windows first, manually configuring your partitioning, then install your linux. Purchase a USB adapter/caddy/enclosure for your old hard drive, and copy off your data from it.

Messing around with partitions is dangerous and if you don't have good backups, then you end up in a very unfortunate position where you have deleted your actual data.

Answer 2

If you've accidentally deleted partitions, try using TestDisk. I can make no promises, but it may be able to find and restore your missing partition(s). Note that you may need to adjust their partition type codes with fdisk (if the disk is MBR) or with gdisk (if the disk is GPT).

Answer 3

I just solved the same type of scenario on my computer like 10 minutes ago.

Follow the answer in this post:
Windows Boot Partition was deleted after re installing Ubuntu 13.10 and can not boot into Windows

If it doesn't work let me know and I might have a few other steps you can try before doing what the post says.