9550 - Cannot boot into Windows

Hi

I using a Dell 9550 and recently installed Ubuntu 16.04 alongside Windows.

Ubuntu worked very well and detected all the correct drivers etc. The only issue I had was that I needed to turn both UEFI and Secure Boot off to boot into Ubuntu. Windows booted fine with them turned on.

Today I attempted to boot into Windows and I'm getting a blue screen with the message...

"Recovery - Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. The boot configuration file is missing some required information. You'll need to use recovery tools."

Does anyone know how I can easily fix this? I have attempted to run the recovery partition by adding Microsoft/Recovery... under UEFI in the BIOS but this does not work. Luckily I was able to mount the NTFS partition in Linux and have backed up everything I need.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Mike

 

Your problem is that you turned off UEFI and Secure Boot.

Windows needs to be either installed with UEFI / Secure Boot ON, or OFF. Now that you turned it OFF, you need to re-install Windows so that it works with UEFI / Secure Boot OFF.

 

There is no need to turn off UEFI when booting into Ubuntu. You just need to deactivate Secure boot. Without UEFI, of course, Windows 10 will not boot...

 

Regardless of whatever you do with the UEFI setting, it's the Secure Boot setting that's causing trouble.

Windows was installed with Secure Boot ON, which means Windows is expecting a fully-secure-chain to boot the OS. You turned Secure Boot OFF to install Linux, which means that Windows no longer has a fully-secure-chain. You therefore need to re-install Windows with Secure Boot OFF, to get a dual-boot Linux / Windows installation working properly.

If you think about it, Secure Boot is doing exactly what it's designed to do in this case. It's refusing to boot the OS, after modifications have been made to the bootloader or boot process (which happened when you installed the Ubuntu bootloader, as part of the Ubuntu installation process). Secure Boot doesn't know if this is an intentional bootloader modification, or if it's a malicious attack. All it sees is a broken secure-boot-chain, so it refuses to boot.

 

Thanks for the great replies - I do find it strange that I could boot into Windows for a couple of days after the installation when turning Secure Boot On. Nevermind...

I would much prefer to use the recovery partition to recover Windows. Any advice as how I would boot to this partition or do I have to do a complete clean install with the necessary drivers loaded to a USB?

Thanks,

Mike

 

That is not correct. I have installed Windows 10 with secureboot on. Later on, I decided to give Antergos a go and was forced to set secureboot to off. I can boot both OS having secure boot deactivated.

PS: I am using rEFInd as a bootloader.

 

I'm using GRUB.

If I want to restore from the recovery partition, how would I go about this?

Will try again to boot into Windows with Secure Boot Off but I'm sure this hasn't worked in the past.

Thanks

 

I'd suggest you do a clean install from Windows Media. I suspect that a true recovery install from Dell will essentially restore the laptop to factory condition... Including partition configuration, bootloader, and secure boot info.

Download the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft, by using their media creation tool to create a bootablr USB flash drive, and do the install from there.

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