0

My issue is a little bit different than anything I've found so far on the forums. I had successfully installed Ubuntu on my Windows 8.1 hp laptop using the manual partitioning method (not the "install alongside windows 8" way). Today my Ubuntu was being weird and the mouse was blinking and all the text was resizing over and over again, and my shutdown button actually popped up the "lock" and "log out" options instead of the "shutdown" and "restart" options.

So I rebooted Ubuntu using LiveUSB and installed it again, and a message showed up saying "Ubuntu 14.04 detected", and the 2 options were "install Ubuntu 14.04 alongside Ubuntu 14.04" and "erase Ubuntu 14.04 and do a clean installation of it (or something like that)". I thought the second option would only affect my Ubuntu partition, so I selected it. Then I restarted my computer and found that my entire hardrive now was taken up by Ubuntu.

Is there a way for me to get back my windows partition? Would installing windows with LiveUSB and then restoring it with the backup I created work?

akivjh
  • 1

2 Answers2

0

I might have great news for you. It is possible, although not likely, that your windows installation actually survives and that you in fact have THREE installations, two of which are 14.04. The way to find out is to load Disk Utility the next time you are booted to ubuntu and count how many NTFS and EXT4 partitions you have.

gyropyge
  • 2,568
0

Unfortunately your windows is gone for sure. No matter what option you selected after you rebooted using LiveUSB you were doomed to lose your Windows.

I have seen guides out there for installing windows after Ubuntu, but I am not sure they applied to Windows 8. Honestly, if it were me, since you are on a fresh install of Ubuntu anyways, I would just use recovery partition or whatever you got and then do your backup to get windows back and then re-install Ubuntu along side windows. Or by using the method you originally did and if you have the issue again just diagnose the issue and maybe can get fixed without a re-install.

One thing I am unsure of if you do do the manual route again, and decide to upgrade to a new version of Ubuntu later, you may run into problems again.

Edit: If you do have files on the windows partition that are not part of your backup, it could be possible to get those files back, but you will need to make no changes to the Ubuntu machine. Below is a askubuntu link about the same thing.

recover using testdisk

Community
  • 1
geoffmcc
  • 1,364