Adventures in Dual Booting
Performed a Windows 7 reinstall this weekend. In the spirit of actually documenting these things so I’m not scrambling off into Google every time I have to do this, this post is a very unscientific description of how I was able to restore GRUB after the install.
1. Boot from Debian Install Disc
Do it.
2. Start in Recovery Mode
I wasn’t able to actually mount the partition until I took this step.
3. Switch to a Console (Alt+F2)
Once you activate a console, mount the old Debian partition at /mnt:
# mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
Then, create a symlink to the boot directory on that partition at the root of the temporary recovery file system:
# ln -s /mnt/boot /boot
4. From the mounted partition, execute grub-setup
I neglected to actually write down where this executable lives (I believe it was somewhere under lib in linux-i386 something or other). Push comes to shove, just do this:
# find /mnt -name grub-setup
You should get no error messages. Then, just reboot and the GRUB menu should reappear.
Warning: I attempted to run grub-install first which complained about not being able to find /sbin/grub-setup. This may have done something before complaining; I’m not sure.
Conclusion
Still need to figure out why I’m getting a error: no such device: {UUID} when I select windows from the list. It boots fine but still gives me the warning.