Restoring the Windows 7 boot loader (after uninstalling Windows 8)?

Question

A while back I installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my PC.

As expected, I quickly grew bored of it, and uninstalled it. I removed the whole partition on which I had installed the OS, and everything seemed okay, until I rebooted.

Whenever I reboot, I'm displayed with the Windows 8 boot loader (even though I deleted the whole partition it was on?), and I can't choose any operating system to boot into. It just says that there was an error.

I did some research, and found out that I should use EasyBCD, but I'm not sure if I can burn it on to a CD and then boot from it? (I have only 700 MB CDs available) Or if there's another tool that I could burn on to a CD that would let me remove the Windows 8 boot loader, and just let me boot to Windows 7.

Solution

You can restore the Windows 7 bootloader from a Windows 7 DVD.

The easy way is to boot from the DVD and use Startup Repair.

The slightly harder way is to go into the command prompt after booting from the DVD, and use these commands:

bootrec /fixmbr

bootrec /fixboot

bootsect /nt60 all

Of course you have to be careful when trying to replace the bootloader, as it can result in a failure to boot. But in your case, it doesn't work anyway, so you can try these commands.

More information, and more things you can try can be found here: How to manually repair Windows 7 boot problems.

Comments

[Admin]

I do believe this is not a duplicate, especially because my problem is mainly with Windows 8, not Ubuntu.

[Tamara Wijsman]

Exact duplicate of How to fix windows 7 after installing windows 8, other duplicates can be found under Linked in the side bar. Please check them out as they all contain solutions to your problem...

[Indrek]

Could you explain how the OP is to "login to Win 7", given that he says he cannot boot into any OS from the Windows 8 bootloader?