Apologies for not being much help here, Mike.
I had installed Windows 8 on separate HDD for laptop dual boot - W7, W8 x64 (laptop has 2 HDD bays).
BIOS only allows boot from HDD0 - no option to boot from HDD1.
I swapped the HDDs a few times & the system did not like that. Ran chkdsk on both HDDs upon boot after each swap to clean up security descriptors.
I lost the W8 install last night after reboot for Windows Updates when installing items for Windbg 6.2.9200
I hope to get W8 back next week installed w/Windows 7 using Windows boot loader for OS boot option & can do testing then. (no BIOS update available from HP)
Thanks,
John