michael favia

If you have ever installed linux as a dual-boot on your computer you know that the GRUB bootloader conveniently places an option to boot back into Windows so that you can run them side by side with 0 effect on eachother (save a little hard drive space).

However, when you install Windows Microsoft assumes that you are fixing a "bug" on your computer. That "bug" is the existence of linux as a bootable option. It conveniently removes GRUB as your boot loader and doesn't replace it with an option to return to linux if you care to do so anytime you reboot. The following steps will write GRUB to the master boot record (MBR) and restore that functionality for you. Please backup any valuable data or know how to get it off your drive in the event that this doesnt work appropriately for you. Only the disks MBR is touched not the data on the partitions.

This will restore grub if you already had grub installed but lost it to a windows install or some other occurrence that erased/changed your MBR so that grub no longer appears at start up or it returns an error.

This is written for Ubuntu but it should work on any liveCD based distro.

1. Boot into the live Ubuntu cd.

2. When you get to the desktop open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type the rest.

   1. Get to the grub> prompt by typing: sudo grub
   2. Get the location of your linux install by typing: find /boot/grub/stage1
   3. Use the HD# and partition# from above and designate the location by typing: root (hd?,?)
   4. Again use the HD# from above install to the MBR with: setup (hd0)
   5. Quit by typing: quit
3. Reboot the computer and enjoy.