Brief: Cannot access Linux in dual boot because system boots straight to Windows without showing the grub menu? Here is a possible fix for you.
So, finally, I upgraded Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 last night. Since, I dual boot Windows 8.1 with Ubuntu, I was expecting to see the Grub menu at the boot so that I could choose the operating system of my choice. But the upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 messed up the settings and it never showed Grub menu. It just kept booting into Windows 10 at each start up.
How to Repair, Restore, or Reinstall Grub 2 with a Ubuntu Live CD or USB. Grub 2 typically gets overridden when you install Windows or another Operating System. To make Ubuntu control the boot process, you need Reinstall (Repair/Restore) Grub using a Ubuntu Live CD. Dec 03, 2015 Boot-Repair is a simple tool to repair frequent boot issues you may encounter in Ubuntu like when you can't boot Ubuntu after installing Windows or another Linux distribution, or when you can't boot Windows after installing Ubuntu, or when GRUB is not displayed anymore, some upgrade breaks GRUB, etc. Boot-Repair lets you fix these issues with a simple click, which (generally reinstalls GRUB.
Frustrating, isn’t it? It seemed like as if there is no way to access Ubuntu at all. No! the Ubuntu install on the other partition was fine. It was just the UEFI settings that were different in the boot manager. I verified everything by accessing UEFI firmware settings in Windows 10.
If you too are unable to boot into Grub and rebooting Windows 10 repeatedly, I am going to present you the simple solution that worked for me.
Warning: Playing with your boot settings can leave your system messed up. I advise having a recovery disk or Windows installation disk with you to reverse boot settings. Keeping the Linux live USB can also help in many situations.
How To Restore Grub Ubuntu Missing After Install Windows 10 Install Easy Bcd follow The Tutorial By Win 10 Matori Carania.com Matori.pe.hu. How to Restore Linux Grub After Installing Windows. If you have Linux installed and you install windows successfully, your Linux grub will go off. But don't worry, this article will help you to reinstall your lost Grub in few steps. There are a lot of methods in Linux that can be used to re-install a broken grub, some can involve the ability to work and restore the boot loader by using the Linux command line and others are fairly simple and implies booting the hardware with a Linux live CD and using the GUI indications to repair the damaged boot loader. To install and start the Boot Repair utility. Sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair; In the window that opens, click the Recommended repair button, wait a few moments to restore GRUB and click OK to save the changes. Then restart the PC and GRUB should be back in its place. Boot Repair Disk.
Fix Dual Boot system going booting straight to Windows
Though I am saying Windows 10, the steps are equally valid for Windows 8 and 8.1. Similarly, I am using Ubuntu in dual boot here but the trick applies to all other Linux distributions such as Linux Mint etc.
Step 1
In Windows, go to the menu.
Step 2
Search for Command Prompt, right click on it to run it as administrator.
Step 3
In here, copy paste the command below:
Repair Grub After Windows 10 Install
You don’t need to enter a password or anything like that. The command should run just fine given that your account has admin rights.
Step 4
Restart and you’ll be welcomed by the familiar Grub screen. I hope this quick tutorial helped you to fix the Grub issue.
It did not work?
If the above entry didn’t change anything, you can reverse it using the command below:
Even if the above command didn’t work, try the command below to set the boot back to Windows.
If you are not able to boot into Windows installation, plug in the Windows installation disk and there you’ll have access to the command prompt.
You can try some suggestions mentioned here to stop dual boot from booting straight into Windows.
If you see a “no boot found” error, you can try this or this solution.
Windows operating systems have the habit of installing their own bootloader on every installation - this wouldn't be a problem, if they would recognize all present operating systems. But unfortunately, they only recognize other Windows systems.
Apart from installing EasyBCD and other tools on your Windows partition to set things right, you can also just reinstall the lost GRUB boot manager with the help of a live CD (I used Ubuntu 11.10 for that). Insert the CD and boot from it. Open a terminal. If you have no idea what the name of your partitions is, use
fdisk -l
to get an overview. My output looks like this:
christian-main christian # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000587d5
.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 629147647 314573792+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 629147648 775948287 73400320 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 775948288 968380415 96216064 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 968382196 976768064 4192934+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 968382198 976768064 4192933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
christian-main christian #
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000587d5
.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 629147647 314573792+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 629147648 775948287 73400320 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 775948288 968380415 96216064 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 968382196 976768064 4192934+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 968382198 976768064 4192933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
christian-main christian #
My first partition, /dev/sda1, has Linux installed and is the partition I want to have GRUB on - what I need is its identifier, sda1. Replace every following instance of that identifier with the one of your partition's identifier. Become root by typing
sudo -i
Afterwards mount your partition and install grub (replace sda1):
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
If there is no grub.cfg in /boot/grub, create one using
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt update-grub
umount /mnt/sys
umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt update-grub
umount /mnt/sys
umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt/proc
Afterwards you can restart your system, remove the Live CD and boot into GRUB.
Restore GRUB bootloader after Windows installation on multi-boot system