Ubuntu – Boot error after screwing up dual-boot files

bootdual-bootpartitioningwindows

Soooooo, I seem to have myself in a very particular situation. Let me start from the beginning, I set up dual boot with Windows 10, and Lubuntu. Everything went according to plan. I then decided that I wanted to remove dual-boot. I looked on several articles some saying to use bootrec.exe, to repair and remove it but then I realized "It doesn't use the windows boot manager… it uses grub." So with this knowledge I searched for guides on how to remove grub. I found a guide (http://linuxbsdos.com/2015/09/05/how-to-delete-grub-files-from-a-boot-efi-partition-in-windows-10/) I could not access my system drive, so I dual-booted into Lubuntu and used root to access the EFI folder and deleted the "ubuntu" folder and rebooted to a happy little message saying: Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key_ . I realize that all my data is still there. I realize that in deleting the "ubuntu" folder that I deleted critical files part of the loading of grub. I now need to somehow replace these files, and get back to Windows 10.

Sidenote: I don't have bootrec.exe as a command. I checked this before I deleted the grub files.

Thanks for the help,
-r

Best Answer

I will recommend you to first reinstall GRUB using a Live USB/CD of Lubuntu and then repair your boot drive by using Boot Repair. Follow the steps on link provided and then use bootrec.exe to achieve your goal.

You can follow these steps

Installing Boot-Repair

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

Using Boot-Repair

Recommended repair

launch Boot-Repair : type "boot-repair" in terminal.

Then click the "Recommended repair" button. When repair is finished, note the URL (paste.ubuntu.com/XXXXX) that appeared on a paper, then reboot and check if you recovered access to your OSs.

If the repair did not succeed, indicate the URL to people who help you by email or forum.

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