Windows 8 dual boot issues

We have an HP laptop that came with Vista pre-installed.

I then updated it to make it dual boot with Ubuntu, and somehow this grew to two different versions of Ubuntu - 9.04 and 11.04.

After updating RAM to improve its woeful performance, I realised that the issue with speed was less to do with RAM, but more to do with the OS.

Amazon were offering an upgrade facility to Win 8 from Vista for just under £40, so I took advantage of this.

I took the "upgrade" rather than clean install option, and that proceeded well.

However, the default screen shown was a bit confusing, and some of the non Microsoft products I'd installed were no longer there.

I finally got around yesterday to resolving this.

I additionally installed:

Avast!
Chrome
iTunes
VLC
SequioaView
Google Drive
Libre Office

All good so far. I then noticed not a lot of free disk space, but this was in part due to the large amount of room (30gb-ish) of Windows.old - the OS I upgraded.

Disk cleaning - including System Files - sorted this.

So there was still a nagging problem - all those erroneous entries on the boot screen. I put in an Ubuntu install disk and looked at the options - install over current, alongside, or "something else" which requires re-partitioning.

There isn't the ability to say "please install Ubuntu" HERE and leave that to happen.

Here comes the (almost fatal) mistake. Ubuntu offers the option to remove an entire OS - easy!

Basically it means doing (from a Terminal prompt):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/os-uninstaller

and then:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install -y os-uninstaller && os-uninstaller

And then you get a dropdown offering you the choice to remove the relevant OS. So off goes 9.04 - hooray!

And then off goes 11.04 too........ooops..... nothing wrong at this stage, but a reboot takes you into a loop with the HP recovery console.

Realisation began to dawn. Having dual boot means the choice is handled by Grub. Grub that sits in Ubuntu. Ubuntu that I have just deleted.

Easy, I think. Simply put the Ubuntu disk in, reinstall and Grub will come back.

Mistake.

I have various disks of Ubuntu from 9.04 through to 12.10. None of them would load.

Am I going to have to reinstall? And will I even be able to, as my Win 8 disk is an upgrade, not the main install? Or is that just what Microsoft want me to believe?

Fortunately I didn't need to find out. I Googled "reinstate Windows 8 master boot record" and got this.

There are several command line options highlighted there, and I tried them all. There was still a problem in finding the Win8 OS though. However, within that same "Repair your computer" menu is an option of "Refresh your computer". I gave this a go, and lo and behold, all is back now.

End result - a Win 8 install that boots automatically with a good 30gb of free space!