I have a laptop with Windows 8.1 install on one SSD. For some reason that installation was using a Windows Bootloader previously installed on a second SSD together with Linux from an old installation.
After wiping that Linux SSD, the Bootloader is gone and there is no way to boot from the first Windows SSD. Using the recovery function from a Windows USB was also unsuccessful.
Is there still a way to get the Windows System booting?
Many thanks!
I was able to figure it out and finally got a new bootloader onto the Windows System drive by following these steps:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
create part efi size=100
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter M
bcdboot C:\windows /s M: /f ALL
The formatting was the missing part in the previous solution. Diskpart would not let me copy the boatloader via bcdboot without having the partition pre-formatted.
First make sure the SSD has a "system partition"; if it doesn't, then create one via diskpart.
In Windows terminology, the "system" partition holds the bootloader (while the "boot" partition holds the actual OS). Usually it's 100~260 MB in size.
For UEFI installations that's the "EFI System Partition" which can be anywhere on the disk. Use the create part efi size=100 command to make it.
For BIOS installations it's just a regular NTFS partition, which must be somewhere within the first 2 TiB of the disk, and have the "active" flag.
(Though you could take the opportunity to convert the disk to GPT for UEFI instead.)
Once the partition exists, use bcdboot to install the bootloader into it.
