Cannot enter BIOS setup on HP ENVY Sleekbook 4, EFI partition broken

Question

I'm running into great trouble with an HP ENVY Sleekbook 4 with an existing Windows 8 installation failing to boot after installing Ubuntu 14.04, and data in the EFI partition is broken (the directory /EFI/HP was renamed while trying to fix the issue). Whenever the computer starts up, it shows Windows 8's blue screen that says \BCD is missing. Normally, F9 and F10 keys are used for entering boot device menu and BIOS setup respectively, but now they take me to the same blue screen! Why? How can I enter BIOS setup or boot device menu again?

Solution

According to New laptop an HP Envy Sleekbook 6 with an AMD A-4555M you need to press Esc first to get into the boot menu and then F10 to get into the bios.

1 - Make the hp recovery disks. In my case it took 6 DVD's

2 - Shut the laptop down and turn it off.

3 - Replace the laptop hard drive with the SSD you wish to use.

4 - Power the HP laptop on and hit esc key to start the boot menu.

5 - Hit F10 to enter the bios.

Comments

[Kinnectus]

Normally, with EFI enabled for Windows 8 you can only get to the UEFI (BIOS) screens by booting to Windows and telling it you want to reboot to access the UEFI screens. Windows then prepares itself to allow you access - fairly logical so you have to prove you're the system admin before making such changes. "Secure Boot" and all that... I have a funny feeling you're going to have to boot a Win 8 disk (DVD or USB) and get it to do the startup repair...

[wildptr]

@BigChris The bad thing is that the computer refuses to boot from USB disk. Not sure about CD/DVD, but I'm afraid it's going to fail too.

[wildptr]

ESC key does the trick :)