I have just had Ubuntu installed alongside Windows 8 on my computer. The gentleman who came around to assist installed Ubuntu in such a way that there was no need to partition the hard drive. Well that is precisely what he said. But something appears to have gone wrong. On re-starting the machine, an error message appeared for a split of a second saying "Operating system missing". Then the screen simply went blank and when you re-start once more, nothing happens. He says my hard drive was definitely defective at the outset and having crashed I need to replace the hard drive. I cannot even access Windows 8 now. Subsequently, I put the hard drive on a another machine and the hard drive is not even being recognised. The screen simply remains blank. You cannot even hear the hard spinning. Has my hard drive really crashed? Can someone please help? I never sought I would end up with so much grief. I guess I should have stuck to Windows 8 and not bothered about an alternate.

That sounds like the windows8 "secure boot" ( read locking out other OS's )

Also " no partitioning ??? "
that might be wubi ( it is a ubuntu thing )

And as far as i know it has no support for win8 secure boot
Windows7 and wubi - yes , but 8 ?


with win8 Microsoft is causing all kinds of problems for the rest of the world
( and not really making win 8 more secure )

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/campaig...estricted-boot

and search this forum for "secure boot "
you will need to use google for a two word search using the "site" tag

https://www.google.com/search?num=30...hp.gYUUFzg-PdM

New hardware can fail easiest take your pc to the place where you bought it and let them check the harddrive.

That's what I am thinking too.

If MikeSA has a Windows 8 install disk, maybe he can run an MBR repair?

If secure boot were the problem then they person helping with the install wouldnt have even been able to boot from the CD to proceed with the installation.
MikeSA mentioned that they completed the installation and it was not until the second time they reboot that the computer didnt display anything.
So sounds like the drive might be bad.

It's been quite a while since I did a Wubi install but I believe it is all done within Windows. There are some alterations to the boot loader which I am not sure are enough to make UEFI boot barf. Just a thought. A hard drive can be checked with the manufacturer's tools to see if it is still good. Without hands on it is hard to say what is really wrong. Maybe UEFI can even be turned off in the board set up as a troubleshooting measure, but would Windows not boot because of that too?

That's what I learned from other members here.

Would running Memtest at this point be useful?

I took the computer back to the dealer. Although the seal at the back of the machine was broken (when I had removed the hard drive to check on another machine) and the warranty was thus void, he kindly tested and formatted the hard drive and then re-installed Windows 8 without charge. I am glad to say that Windows 8 is now back on my machine but the question is : What caused the hard drive to crash (if indeed it did crash) in the first place when Ubuntu was installed? Could it be that Windows 8 did not allow another operating system to be installed inside it? But then many install Ubuntu alongside Windows 8 without any problems. So what could possibly have gone wrong?

i would guess that the person who put ubuntu on it messed it up

and was fallowing windows vista or windows 7 guide