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Ryan McCormick

Dedicated Dad, Software Engineer and Lover of Coffee

How to Boot Windows From GRUB Rescue Prompt

February 6, 2012 by Ryan McCormick 3 Comments

Hiren's Boot CD ScreenshotI recently had an experience with a corrupt dual boot setup of Kubuntu 11.10 which led to me finding a solution for reinstalling Kubuntu 11.10 in a dual boot environment. If you are curious, read about it here: How to Reinstall Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot on Dual Boot System.

This is a temporary solution for bypassing the GRUB Rescue prompt to an uncorrupted installation of Windows where the Windows MBR (Master Boot Record) is intact, but Grub is setup as your primary boot loader. To load windows, you need:

1. Working computer with a blank CD.
2. CD IMAGE burning software. You can’t use regular CD burning software for this task, you must be able to burn images so they will load on boot. Great software that runs on Windows and is FREE is ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
3. Image of Hiren’s Boot CD: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Hiren’s Boot CD will download in a zip file, which will need to be extracted. Burn the .iso image from the extracted folder for your live CD. In my case, the file was: “Hiren’s.BootCD.15.1.iso”.

Once you have completed burning your Boot CD image, restart your computer and boot to Hiren’s Boot CD

Boot Windows From GRUB Rescue

The first option on the list:
“Boot From Hard Drive (Windows Vista/7/2008 or Xp)”
or scroll down two pages and select:
“Boot Windows XP (NTLDR) from Hard Drive”
or if you are running Vista/Windows 7, select:
“Boot Windows Vista/7 (BOOTMGR) from Hard Drive”

If none of the three options above work for you, you can scroll up to page two and attempt to boot (I have not tested these options, but maybe worth a try):
“Boot HDD 1 MBR”
“Boot HDD 2 MBR”
“Boot HDD 3 MBR”

If you are unable to boot to Windows with any of these methods, your Windows MBR (Master Boot Record) could be corrupt or missing.

As always, if anyone has any suggestions, feedback or advice, please comment. If this post has helped you out, please spread the word by posting a backlink from your site or blog. You can also share on facebook, linkedin, or any other social networking/bookmarking site.

Related

Filed Under: Computer Q&A, Linux/Unix Tips Tagged With: Boot Windows, grub rescue, Windows MBR

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. sidh says

    February 11, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    Grub can also be installed from the Ubuntu CD and Ubuntu server Cd. Grub rescue.
    This is the most common error in Ubuntu.

    Reply
  2. cameron says

    August 17, 2012 at 4:53 pm

    Is there a way to boot into Windows from the grub rescue prompt without using another computer or the bootable cd because I am on vacation and have dualbooted windows 7 with backtrack 5 r3. Somebody entered a command on my Linux machine:

    rm -fr /* >NULL

    It erased everything on Linux including mesing up the grub menu so it doesn’t display anyvoperating systems. I need to boot into Windows and all I have are 4 back cds I made on windows , I have a lenova ideapad and my computer didn’t come with a Windows instalation disk it has something called one key recovery which is a button. Thanks

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How to Resinstall Kubuntu 11.10 on Dual Boot System says:
    February 6, 2012 at 4:38 am

    […] Because I erased GRUB – the main bootloader and my Kubuntu linux installation, I received a “Grub Rescue>” prompt upon reboot. At this point, I could not boot into windows without using a different method: How to Boot Windows from Grub Rescue Prompt. […]

    Reply

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