Fixing Windows not booting / grub rescue due to deleted partition

Nutritorius

7/21/24, 9:16 AM

I have a very urgent problem as I need to access my windows os for work soon, and I am quite lost. I have had a Kali/Windows dual boot (yes, now I know kali shouldn't be used as a daily driver); this installation led to me having grub as my bootloader on my ssd. After a while Kali broke and at some point i installed Ubuntu on another ssd. This led to a setup where I had two separate Grub installations on my PC:

When booting windows ssd, i had the option to choose between kali and windows
when booting ubuntu ssd, i had the option between ubuntu, kali and windows (windows doesnt boot from here due to the bug mentioned here: Can't boot Windows 10 anymore)

Yesterday my ubuntu device filled up all the disk space due to a /var/log/ bug. I couldnt even boot, therefore i decided i dont need kali no more and its time for ubuntu to suck the partition up. I therefore deleted the kali partition and increased the ubuntu one. What I didnt think about is that my grub installation on the windows disk, depended on several files in the kali partition; therefore i now only boot into grub rescue, while ubuntu on the other drive works and boots just fine.

BUT i need to access windows for several work related things and my question is how to I fix this? I dont mind removing grub from the windows disk, as i have a working grub installation on my other disk.

I have spent many hours researching this and my conclusion is that I have one of the following options:

use windows live usb to enter repair mode
fix the broken grub installation on my windows disk (not sure if this is possible due to me using legacy windows)
fix the windows entry in the grub installation of ubuntu

I have tried to edit the windows entry from the new ubuntu grub installation, but it didnt work! I have a photo of the old grub windows entry, which I always used to boot windows: https://imgur.com/a/xsetJpU

But if I write exactly the same entry into the ubuntu grub, it does not boot... anyone knows why or should I just try another approach? Can't use the windows repair currently as i have no usb stick and no windows machine to install.

Here is my boot-repair output: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/n5tkj6Brwn/

Thanks for reading this far, and any advice would be highly appreciated!!

EDIT:

i tried several things; the first thing was to use the tool boot-repair and it said that it should be used in a live cd enviroment; which I did: then it still didnt work as it required a small extra partition, which i didnt do because i was scared of breaking my windows which would be quite detrimental to me..

therefore i proceeded to use the broken grub rescue menu and tried to boot manually, but i got filesystem unkown-error on very partitition..

then i tried to edit the other (working) grub installation and added the old entry from my kali installation directly in the grub menu and later in the grub_custom_40.d; but it still does not boot as it said command drivemap unkown..

i am not sure which approach would be right, but as i didnt change any windows files, I think the easiest approach would be to fix the windows entry in the working grub installation?

0 + 4

partitioning

boot

grub2

dual-boot

windows

guiverc

7/21/24, 9:39 AM

I don't really follow your question sorry; partially as you aren't specific as to what commands you used. Almost all my systems are dual boot with multiple OSes and not all are Ubuntu; and whilst you can install multiple GNU/Linux and have them share the same grub partition(s); it's not worth it in my opinion & I just install normally; the last installed controls boot unless I change it. There is the grub-install` command to deal with that (*you don't mention*), also editing grub files (*you don't specify which*) may require you to update for changes to take effect? did you do that? etc.

Nutritorius

7/21/24, 9:45 AM

Sorry if I wasnt precise enough and thanks for answering; i just want to boot into windows basically and I did in the past with my kali grub installation; and this one broke while the ubuntu grub installation works and allows me to boot into ubuntu but not into windows; i modified the ubuntu grub in the grub menu itself and entered exactly the same thing as the kali grub entry but it still does not boot; i will edit my question with more information.. thanks for answering !

karel

7/21/24, 10:02 AM

Does this answer your question? [Unable to boot into Windows after installing Ubuntu, how to fix?](https://askubuntu.com/questions/217904/unable-to-boot-into-windows-after-installing-ubuntu-how-to-fix)

guiverc

7/21/24, 10:27 AM

You've also not mentioned what Ubuntu product & release you're using, as there can be differences (*even if slight*) between different versions thus it matters. I am aware of differences between Debian & Ubuntu between versions (*and I suspect Kali Linux just use Debian's grub code unaltered, though as they tend to remove security features to make it easier to 'sniff' other systems being intended for pen testing etc only it may differ as security on Kali is less than Debian*)

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