Recover the bootloader on Windows Follow proper steps to reinstall or restore the original bootloader.
Recover the bootloader on Windows Follow proper steps to reinstall or restore the original bootloader.
I accidentally removed my bootloader. Windows tends to put its bootloaders on other disks, which caused it to crash when I formatted a drive. Now I don’t have Microsoft OS and need another way to install. I can still boot into Ubuntu, but using an installation media didn’t work because Windows wasn’t found.
Use Ubuntu to collect the information for backup, reinstall Windows, and retrieve files if available. Confirm if the drive was completely erased.
Do you have a place to put the bootloader? If not, create one. Use available space on your Windows drive if possible. Otherwise, allocate another drive so you can boot into Windows, reduce a partition in Windows, and then reinstall the bootloader there. After setting that up, refer to the instructions at http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-boo...windows-8/ for guidance. This method skips automatic recovery steps, which often fail when the bootloader is missing. If it still doesn't work, boot into Ubuntu, copy essential files, and reinstall. It's not ideal, but it's preferable to having no functional computer.
To prevent such scenarios, I usually verify that only the intended drive is connected during installation. I’ve experienced unusual bootloader behavior on one drive, which sometimes redirects to another when cloned—like having an SSD install on a HDD with exact bit-level duplication. Even when instructed to boot from the SSD, it ends up loading Windows onto the HDD.