Hi I have a Lenovo laptop that had a pre-installed Win8.1 on the HDD. I bought a Crucial MX100 512GB to migrate to there instead. I followed this guide: eightforums.com/installation-setup/17083-how-migrate-os-new-hard-disk.html to do the migration, but I used this product: paragon-software.com/home/hdm-personal. I checked the box to "Switch EFI to boot from destination drive", where the documetation says: "The selected source 64-bit Windows 8 is configured to the uEFI boot mode, so if we want to start up Windows from the target SSD, we need to additionally mark the appropriate option. Please note however the source disk will become unbootable after the migration is over. Anyway you can specify a bootable device at any time through Boot Corrector." Suffice to say, it broke. No boot. Windows error screen saying "winload.efi cannot be found" and I followed everything in this guide: neosmart.net/wiki/winload-efi-missing-corrupt. I did the automatic repair (failed) and did the commands for bootrec to no avail. So I have EasyBCD and before I have tried to dual boot but eventually reverted everything back to NORMAL booting. (that is why Ubuntu is there). I have secure boot enabled, and a uEFI BIOS. This is my EasyBCD config: When I try to boot, I have to scroll down to Windows Boot Manager to boot up. The others don't work. Please help me I am out of my depth here. I am scared of totally damaging things. Edit: More info from EasyBCD.
I would say you use the Ubuntu live CD to do repair of the grub using Boot Repair. It is usually advisable to install Linux last to avoid such complication.
I just want to clarify I do NOT want to dual boot. I simply want Windows 8.1 to boot as normal, without any boot menu. I don't want GRUB, or Ubuntu, or any other Windows. Just my Win8.1. But when I migrated from HDD to SSD, I got the blue error screen: "Recovery , Your PC needs to be repaired The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors. File: \windows\system32\winload.efi Error code: 0x0000225." Pressing Enter to try again: fails. Pressing F8 for startup settings: fails. Pressing Esc for UEFI Firmware Settings brings up a list of devices for me to boot, and when I scroll down to Windows Boot Manager it boots.
What if you boot into WinPE, check what drive letter your OS is (C: D:??) and run "BCDboot C:\Windows" to repair BCD. If you don't have WinPE you can boot your Windows Install DVD, press SHIFT+F10 to give you a command prompt & run it from there. Did all the partitions get migrated? For simple UEFI you should have System, MSR, Windows. Your laptop probably has WinRETools, System, MSR, Windows, Recovery. You can check by running diskpart: sel dis 0 lis par exit