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pedropt

Member

Registered: 2017-01-27

Posts: 11  

What to do if grub boot loader disapeard

One of the most common errors that people do when they are installing a dual OS (Windows/Linux) is to install first linux and then windows next .
If the windows OS is 8 or above then it is even worst , because windows 8 on installing create 2 partitions on hard disk for itself .
So , if your case is this one , and you lost your grub bootloader and now computer goes directly to windows , then what you should do is :

1st : download this image "super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.02s6.iso"
https://sourceforge.net/projects/superg … o/download

2nd - download W32 Disk image writer and install it on your windows
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

3rd - get an usb storage pen to write the image from supergrub 2 .

4th - write the image
(my case was drive K , but you should check witch drive letter is assigned from windows to your USB pen and select it , by default is a (removable drive) .

you can also instead using an usb pen , you can write this image on a CD that will work too

5th - After the image is writen on your USB pen or CD , reboot your computer and press continually F12 to get boot startup selection .
(the command could be different from bios to bios manufacturer , some bios is F11 instead F12)

(In my case is an usb pen drive , and its name is "Kingston data traveler" , but yours will have other name "in case other pen brand" , or if you are using a CD then you must select your CD drive to bios start up .)
you must have your pen inserted on a USB port , or your CD with supergrub image  when you are rebooting the computer .

6th - when your Usb pen or CD start to boot , this screen from grub will popup .

(select to detect and show boot methods)

7th - after 1 minute of searching the hard disks , grub wll show your installed operating systems , and give you an option to select to witch one you want to start .

My case shows kali linux , because my devuan was migrated from a kali wheezy distribution , but yours will show (Devuan GNU/linux) , or whatever linux name distribution you have installed

Select yours like it is in the image before .

8th - You will boot to your linux , and now you have to reinstall grub again on your hard disk boot record , to do that open a terminal in your linux and write :

grub-install  /dev/sda

(by default the first hard disk on bios boot is sda on linux

9th - After grub been installed , all you have to do is to update grub and reboot your computer .

update-grub

To reboot linux you may go to your linux top panel and select reboot , or in the terminal window write (reboot)

reboot

Computer will reboot and your grub menu will appear with your previous boot options to you to choose.

VERY IMPORTANT : Do not install grub on secondary partitions on your hard disk , like (sda1 , sda2 , sdb1 , etc,,,) , this will problably damage the data on those partitions. USE only (sda , sdb , etc... depending on your case)

Last edited by pedropt (2017-02-03 16:25:07)

Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: What to do if grub boot loader disapeard

Alternatively, keep them all happy with the grub2win project at SourceForge, and avoid constant takeover struggles.