Advanced Repair Windows 10
Chloe Sarnoff
There are several Windows 10 advanced repair options you can use to solve boot problems such as running Startup Repair, repairing the Master Boot Record (MBR) and fixing corrupted system files. The problem is, if you're running into Windows 10 boot problems you probably can't launch the OS normally. Instead you must go in through the back door. To do so, you must first figure out how to access the Windows 10 advanced repair options.
In some cases, Windows senses something is amiss when you start the computer and prompts you with the Automatic Repair screen. From this screen, you can restart the computer or access Windows 10 advanced repair options. If the Automatic Repair screen doesn't appear, you can restart the computer until it does. On some systems, you can press a specific key on startup, such as F11, to access the screen.
If the automatic repair screen doesn't appear you might need to boot from installation media or a recovery drive. From there, you can navigate to the advanced repair options. The exact approach depends on the underlying computer, whether you're booting into the system from installation media or a recovery drive, and whether the device supports the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.
From this screen, you can run the Startup Repair tool or launch the Windows Command Prompt window, where you can run the command-line utilities necessary to repair the MBR, scan the system for corrupt or missing files or use Deployment Image Servicing and Management.
Windows 8 and 10's advanced startup tools function differently than the tools on previous versions of Windows. If your Windows 8 or 10 system can't boot properly, the tools will appear automatically so you can fix the problem.
We've covered several ways to access the advanced startup options if your PC is working properly, including through the PC settings application. You can also create a recovery drive to ensure you'll always be able to access these options.
Once you've accessed the advanced startup options, you'll need to click (or tap) the Troubleshoot option to access the troubleshooting and repair options. The Continue and Turn off your PC options will continue booting to Windows (assuming there isn't a problem) or power off your computer.
If you aren't sure which to use, click "Keep My Files" first. Windows will be reinstalled, but most of your files will be saved. You can always come back later and click "Remove Everything" if you want.
The advanced options here may allow you to fix the problem --- the Automatic Repair option is particularly useful, and the System Restore or Safe Mode options may help you boot your computer. If none of these options work, you'll need to perform a refresh (or a full reset.)
If the computer boots into Ubuntu automatically without showing the GRUB menu at all, sometimes you can press the manufacturer's BIOS/UEFI key at boot time and while in UEFI or BIOS mode from the firmware menus select the operating system you need. Common keys used are Esc, Delete, F1, F2, F10, F11, or F12. On tablets, common buttons are Volume up or Volume down. During startup, there's often a screen that mentions the key. If there's not one, or if the screen goes by too fast to see it, check your manufacturer's website.*
If this doesn't work when the GRUB menu does not appear at boot time, immediately after the motherboard / computer manufacturer logo splash screen appears when the computer is booting, with BIOS, quickly press and hold the Shift key, which will bring up a GNU GRUB menu screen. With UEFI press (perhaps several times) the Esc key to get to the GNU GRUB menu screen. Sometimes the manufacturer's splash screen is a part of the Windows bootloader, so when you power up the machine it goes straight to the GNU GRUB menu screen, and then pressing Shift is unnecessary.
Open the Boot Repair application and select Advanced Options -> Other Options tab -> Repair Windows boot files. The boot flag should be placed on the same partition on which Ubuntu is installed. The partition on which Ubuntu is installed can be identified from the Disks application which is built-in in Ubuntu.
Rescatux is a free bootable live CD/USB that can repair GRUB and the Windows bootloader. Rescatux has a graphical interface with a menu of operating system rescue tasks. If your hard disk has the MBR partitioning format, you can select the Restore Windows MBR (BETA) option to repair the Windows bootloader. If your computer has UEFI firmware, you can select among the UEFI boot options.
Insert a USB flash drive and check if the boot flag has been enabled on the flash drive using the GParted application. Unmount the USB flash drive. Open GParted and select the USB flash drive from the menu list of drives. From the GParted menu select: Partition -> Manage Flags -> check boot.
It is very important to verify that the device that you are installing the Rescatux live USB to is indeed your flash drive, so that you don't overwrite any of your system or personal files which may make your operating system unbootable. In Ubuntu you can find the device name of the flash drive using the Disks application.
On the pinned apps section on the left side of the Start menu, locate the Settings app. It's typically represented by a gear icon. Click the Settings app to open the Windows Settings app. You can also select the Settings app from the app list. Under Settings, click Update & Security to continue.
At this point, you have two options. You can either choose to keep your personal files and only remove downloaded apps and settings, or you can wipe everything and start from scratch. Each choice will also give you an additional setting to change.
If you choose Keep my files, apps and settings will default to what they were when the PC was brand new. This setting can be turned off by clicking the Change settings link and switching it off. If you choose Remove everything, there's also a way to remove your personal files while saving apps and settings. Click the Change settings link and toggle the Data erasure option to on.
Once you decide what should be removed from the computer, hit Next and Windows will tell you what will be deleted before you make a final decision. If you selected Keep my files, you can look at a list of apps that will be removed with the reset.
Finally, click Reset to actually commit. Your computer will restart, and after several minutes, it will boot back up again. When you return to Windows, you'll see that whatever you selected to be removed has been wiped from the machine. If you backed up your files, they can now be restored to the machine.
Reboot and you should see an entry titled "Windows (UEFI)" and if you select it then Windows should boot. If that does not work, please run boot info script ( ) and post the RESULTS.txt that it produces so that I have the information needed to give you proper advice.
If the OSs were installed in different modes, dual booting Windows and Ubuntu can't work. If your Windows is installed in BIOS mode, it is recommended to install your Ubuntu in BIOS mode, but if it's installed in UEFI mode, then do the same with Ubuntu. The easiest way to find out if you are running UEFI or BIOS is to look for a folder named /sys/firmware/efi. The folder will be missing if your system is using BIOS.
If you have installed Ubuntu in legacy mode on the same drive with GPT partitioning, you can use Boot Repair's Advanced options to uninstall grub-pc and install grub-efi-amd64. That converts the Ubuntu installation from BIOS boot to UEFI boot, the same firmware as most recently manufactured laptops with Windows pre-installed have.
Set up your BIOS so that it boots the hard drive in UEFI mode. The way to adjust this setting depends on the specific model of the computer, but generally this setting is located in the boot priority settings under the Boot tab of the BIOS/UEFI setup utility.
The already installed Windows OS wasn't detected when you installed Ubuntu. os-prober from the default Ubuntu repositories detects other OSs available on a system and outputs the results in the terminal. If os-prober doesn't work, check if the command sudo fdisk -l is able to find the Windows partition.
Make sure you boot in UEFI mode. Use sudo efibootmgr -t nn to utilize your EFI's menu. You can choose Windows Boot Manager or ubuntu (GRUB).
NOTICE: Windows will erase GRUB installation at its own EFI system partition each time BOOTMGR is updated.
If you are using Bitlocker, you probably made some changes to the partitions right before installing Ubuntu (like freeing up unallocacted space for the Ubuntu installation), then you may get that problem because GRUB cannot deal with the security prompt that appears when starting windows that asks you for the bitlocker recovery key.
I had almost the same problem after installing Ubuntu 16.04.02 alongside Windows 7. Ubuntu would start fine, but after choosing the Windows 7 loader from GRUB, the screen would show some strange pattern of regular multicolored skewed lines and stay stuck there until the processor fan would turn on and hot and I decided to shut down the computer to avoid damage.
Salvation came from using Hiren's Boot CD and using the Boot Windows 7 option in the main menu therein, which allowed me to get to the prompt for the bitlocker recovery key, enter the key, suspend and resume bitlocker in my windows session, and use my dual boot system as intended afterwards.
Some secure boot machines cannot seem to boot Windows from grub.A workaround is to provide a different set of EFI files for each type of boot, putting the second set for Ubuntu on a USB stick, and leaving the EFI files on the hard disk for Windows.
You have a working Ubuntu set of EFI files already on the hard disk, so take a (small) USB stick (empty, as you will lose all dataon it), put a GPT partition table on it, and make a 250M partition forthe EFI files. Copy the hard disk's EFI files to the stick. They willappear in the /boot/efi directory, under the directory EFI.
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