Jonathan Riboux – Technical Blog Python, Zope, Plone and more

Restore Windows boot option in grub 2 menu after installing Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

After installing Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10, grub 2 doesn't detect whether windows is installed or not (at least it did not for me), so you can't boot windows any more.

To fix this, there is a tool called grub-mkconfig that generates automatically a grub configuration file in /boot/grub/grub.cfg by detecting which operating systems are installed on your box.

To re-generate grub.cfg and install it as boot loader configuration, follow below instructions :

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# edit grub.cfg and look if there is non-ascii characters (accentuated ones) in labels, if so, replace them with ascii characters
sudo nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg
#replace /dev/sda with the device where grub boot loader should be installed
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Reboot your computer.

Now a line that allows you to boot your Windows installation should appear in grub's menu.