Dual boot surface pro 3, can't get into Windows 10 now

so i've been wanting to try out ubuntu for some time now, and finally made the leap to install it onto my computer (surface pro 3). All goes well until I finish installing ubuntu and try to get back into windows. Computer starts fine, goes into the purple background boot loader, and when I try to go into windows, it goes straight into this blue background screen that says "Recovery there are no more BitLocker recovery options on your PC.

You'll need to use recovery tools. . .

Press the Windows key for UEFI Firmware Settings"

I press the windows key, nothing happens.

Now I've done a little research and I've narrowed the problem down to what I think is the boot loader. I want to try to delete the Ubuntu boot loader and use the Windows one (then remove ubuntu for now), but all resources i've found required me to have windows working :/

Is this even the right answer? Has anyone else encountered this? How do I start using the original windows boot loader if I don't have access to windows?

Thanks!

1 Answer

I have a number of suggestions, none of them guaranteed to work:

• Use the computer's built-in boot manager to select which OS to boot. You can normally get to this tool by hitting Esc, Enter, or a function key (usually F8 or above) soon after powering on the computer; however, there's no standardization on this, so you may have to experiment to find it. If this is successful, you should be able to boot Windows, but you'll need to use this trick every time you do so.
• Type sudo efibootmgr in Linux to see your boot options. You can then adjust the boot order with the -o option, as in sudo efibootmgr -o 2,5,0 to give priority to Boot0002, then Boot0005 if that fails, and so on. This won't solve the problem per se, but it may be useful in conjunction with the preceding suggestion if you want to make Windows the default boot option -- you'd set Windows as the default, followed by Ubuntu, rather than the other way around.
• Install my rEFInd boot manager from Ubuntu. rEFInd often does a better job of launching Windows than does GRUB, so it may work around the problem with less awkwardness than the computer's built-in boot manager. Note that if Secure Boot is enabled, when you reboot you'll need to locate and enroll a Secure Boot key (either EFI\refind\keys\refind.cer or EFI\refind\keys\refind_local.cer) using a rather limited user interface.
• Use the Boot Repair tool. This will re-install GRUB and adjust its configuration. It might fix things, but I doubt if the odds of it helping are that great. There's also a small risk that it will make matters worse.

Try these suggestions in whatever order you like, or ignore them altogether of course.

1

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy