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I made my window 10 system system in dual boot with ubuntu. I would like to remove ubuntu and install it in virtual-box within windows.

I am afraid to remove ubuntu partions fearing windows may not boot after it. Currently I get ubuntu Grub screen on booting computer. How do I get my windows bootloader back so that I don't see grub screen again. Once I am able to do that I can delete ubuntu partions and merge it back with windows partitions.

Please help to get me my windows bootloader back.

Thanks :)

2 Answers 2

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You only need to delete the EFI binaries of grub from the ESP ($ESP/EFI/grub/grubx64.efi and/or remove the EFI boot entry of grub with efibootmgr -B. The Windows Boot Manager should not have been touched by Ubuntu ($ESP/EFI/Microsoft/bootmgfw.efi) and it is discovered automatically by most UEFI (so you don't need to register it manually; efibootmgr should tell whether there's an existing entry for it as well).

($ESP is the mountpoint of the EFI System Partition, e.g. /boot/efi)

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If your windows installation vanished after installing Linux

I had windows 11 installed on sda (hard disk) and Manjaro Linux installed on sdb (SSD). For some reason I reinstalled Manjaro on the same drive (sdb), and windows boot entry vanished.

I can see both EFI partition and C: partition exist and accessible but BIOS firmware settings or grub doesn't detect windows bootloader. efibootmgr shows windows bootloader but it removes windows bootloader when saved.

Solution

Use another windows computer or make a virtual box VM with windows and use Rufus to make a bootable windows USB. Boot up your computer using that, and select [Repair your computer] instead of installing.

Try "Startup repair". But it didn't work for me alone.

Open command line from windows recovery menu and type

BOOTREC /FIXMBR
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
BOOTREC /ScanOS
BOOTREC /rebuildbcd

Then restart. When restarting boot up from the windows USB again, go to repair and run "Startup repair". Restart again. Hopefully you'll boot into your existing windows installation.

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