Recover or Reinstall the GRUB Bootloader

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If GRUB is overwritten or removed after installing another operating system, you can usually restore it from a Linux live USB or CD.

Boot into the live Linux environment and open a terminal. In this example, the installed Linux root partition is /dev/sda2 and GRUB will be installed to /dev/sda. Change these device names to match your system.

Recover GRUB from a live environment

First, mount the installed Linux root partition:

mount /dev/sda2 /media/linux

Bind the live environment’s device directory into the mounted system. This also helps avoid errors where grub-probe cannot find the device for the root filesystem.

mount --bind /dev /media/linux/dev

Now enter the installed Linux environment:

chroot /media/linux

Reinstall GRUB to the disk:

grub-install /dev/sda

After the command completes successfully, exit the chroot and reboot. Remove the live USB or CD when prompted.

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