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After being forced by Windows to select 'update and shut down'; Windows killed my GRUB menu. I used to have Fedora installed but I removed Fedora and installed Kubuntu some time ago. Suddenly, after the Windows update, my Fedora kernels are listed again in the GRUB. GRUB shows up, just with the wrong kernels from a previous Linux OS. I can boot fine into Windows Boot Manager though. EasyBCD shows the following: "There is one entry in the Windows bootloader."

I already ran update-grub -- no luck.

My partitions are not gone, I can use the rescue terminal fine, and grub.cfg displays something with Ubuntu, so I'm guessing that's OK as well. GRUB stays messed up with the Fedora kernels listed though. I was guessing I had to repair the boot partition using a live USB drive / CD, but I don't know how exactly.

karel
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LoopsGod
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    i feel your pain! i've had the same experience! that was the day i gave up on windows. – Woodrow Barlow Nov 07 '19 at 14:22
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    FWIW if you open the TaskManager ( -- shortcut) you should be able to kill the process that wants you to update & shutdown – Carl Witthoft Nov 07 '19 at 14:30
  • Thanks Carl, turns out you can also delay the updates in settings. However, those things should just work and Microsoft should just make it work. – LoopsGod Nov 11 '19 at 13:27

5 Answers5

19

Have you tried running Boot-Repair?

It worked for me with a similar issue. This software repairs common issues with boot and grub menu entries. And if it can't solve a certain issue, it outputs a report which you may paste here so that the issue may be understood better.

You may install and run it on Ubuntu through the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair    
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

I hope it can work out the issues with kernel entries you described!

David
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Arak Tog
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  • If you're using LVM, check my answer to make sure boot-repair will work without any problems (https://askubuntu.com/a/1186542/1012884). Thanks for your help clara. – LoopsGod Nov 05 '19 at 21:02
  • I managed to fix the problem by running boot-repair. I made sure to run sudo apt install lvm2 before running boot-repair; not doing so will cause boot-repair to fail (for my NVME SSD at least). – LoopsGod Nov 05 '19 at 21:01
12

It might not hurt to run efibootmgr in a Linux terminal to clean out old boot entries. I had a similar issue and wrote a how to on a different forum...

How To Fix: No boot device found.

1Crimson1
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6

In my case, when the computer boots I can press the F2 key to get into a system "Setup Utility". Note that this is before any GRUB menu is shown. In the Setup Utility there is a section called "Boot" and there is a list of different boot options, coming from different operating systems that I have installed. In my case, there is one Ubuntu entry, two Fedora entries and one for Windows. (Fedora appears twice because I installed Fedora on two different occasions.) Here is what it looks like for me, the list I'm talking about is in the lower part, under "EFI":

photograph of firmware setup utility

(Note that on your computer it may look different, but with a bit of luck you will have something similar.)

This is great, because it lets me choose which one I want to use, by ordering them, the one on top will be used. In my case I have chosen Ubuntu, which means that I get the GRUB menu created by my Ubuntu installation.

So to fix your problem, try to find the corresponding settings on your computer (could be F2 or some other key you need to press when it boots) and reorder the list of EFI entries to put Ubuntu on top, then you should get the Ubuntu GRUB menu when you boot.

Eliah Kagan
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Elias
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    If you are lucky, you will find the right key to press below the computer's maker logo that comes up. It might only show for a few seconds. – crip659 Nov 05 '19 at 19:57
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    @crip659 Thanks for you response, I've tried this but Ubuntu doesn't show in the EFI menu, unfortunately. Our menu does look the same; except I don't have the ubuntu option. – LoopsGod Nov 05 '19 at 20:10
  • On Thinkpad X1 Gen 4, the solution was to press ENTER ("To interrupt normal boot, press ENTER") after power on, and then F12 ("to choose a temporary startup device"). This takes you to the 'Boot Menu'. There I had four options: (1) Windows Boot Manager, (2) NVMe0: SAMSUNG MZxxxxxxxxx-00L1, (3) PCI LAN, and (4) Linux-Firmware Updater. Selecting (2) NVMe0, resulted in rebooting the machine into the GRUB bootloader. Woo hoo. BTW, after having done this, checking the same menu, there's now a 5:fh option (actually the first) labeled 'ubuntu', which confirm things are back to normal. – HenrikB Jan 08 '22 at 02:46
1

I don't even use Ubuntu, but I do use grub with my CentOS 8 installation. And my Windows 10 upgraded to Windows 11 in December of 2021. It was actually quite simple to repair. Windows Boot Manager is not obstructive at all. Just enter Escape until you get BIOS menu on startup. Then press F9 to go into Boot Menu. Notice under OS Boot, Windows Boot Manager will be in highest order. Select your main boot underneath it and move it to the top. It will then restart your computer and grub will be back whereupon you can select your CentOS installation or whatever linux distro you are using.

I am now writing you from my CentOS dual boot!

Daniel Viglione
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0

A valid alternative, in case it is not possible to start Linux, you can use supergrub disk to start linux, and then from there install grub-customizer and rearrange the mbr

skrunk
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