Recover windows boot

Post at — Jan 18, 2025
#blog #windows

How to recover the windows boot partition files.

This guide is suggested when you accidentally format the boot partition while installing a new OS, wiping out the Windows bootloader in the process. This has happened to me on more than one occasion, which is why I decided to document it.

It has also happened when the Windows bootloader is deleted. The following steps are solely for copying the Windows boot files using the ISO onto the partition without having to reformat it.

Select the disk.

1
list disk sel disk #

Select the boot partition.

List the partitions, select the FAT32 partition, and assign a letter to it.

1
list vol sel vol # assign letter z:

Load Windows boot files.

1
bcdboot c:\windows /s z: /f all

That’s it! Simply restart, boot into the main OS, run os-prober, and execute update-grub to add the boot entry to grub.