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The title says it all. I installed grub-customizer, made some changes to the GUI, and lost my Windows boot entries. I've tried running sudo update-grub, but it didn't detect Windows. How can I recover the boot option?

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    please make sure that the windows volume is mounted before running sudo update-grub. then it will pick up the windows partition.
    – user272222
    Apr 22, 2014 at 0:30

2 Answers 2

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You should repair your windows installation with your Windows bootable DVD, using the Repair your computer option, and after you finish with this one, you can download Boot Repair CD iso image and burn it on a regular CD or put it on USB key via Unetbootin. I assume you still have the installation disc for WIN7?

Oh, useless to say that you should get rid of 'grub-customizer' as soon as you can.

Boot Repair CD comes in 2 versions, one is for 32bit OS and the other for 64bit OS. So if you installed Win7 64bit you'll be needing boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso image, and the 32bit iso image for Win7 32bit.

After you make sure that you can boot into Win7, you can place your new Boot Repair CD in tray or use the USB version and restart your computer. Allow the CD to load its system, and choose the Recommended Repair option once you are in the live session with Boot Repair CD.

After you restart your computer again and, hopefully, boot into Ubuntu you should run the sudo update-grub command so Ubuntu be able to list your Windows in the boot menu.

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  • That tutorial in the link I gave you is for repairing Win7 mbr. I hope you are using Win7 and not Win8.
    – Taz D.
    Apr 21, 2014 at 20:00
  • I tried following the tutorial to no avail. After a while, I figured out that my Windows repair disk couldn't detect my HDD. Can I do this from Ubuntu?
    – Zach
    Apr 21, 2014 at 23:10
  • Tried running boot repair. Results: pastebin.com/F3zsDQXE
    – Zach
    Apr 21, 2014 at 23:37
  • Should I try using boot repair to restore the MBR?
    – Zach
    Apr 21, 2014 at 23:40
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    Forgot to tell you that if you get lucky with 'Recommended Option' in Boot Repair CD, you need to run sudo update-grub after reboot and login to Ubuntu. This way, Ubuntu will eventually detect Windows, and you are on the right track. If win7 won't boot after restart, you can try using Win7 DVD again to fix the mbr. And, of course, Boot Repair CD again...
    – Taz D.
    Apr 22, 2014 at 6:55
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IRST metadata from Windows was causing conflicts after grub settings were updated. I followed the steps in this article to remove it. After that, I ran update-grub and allowed Windows to run chkdsk. All is well, and IRST is reenabled.

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