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Grub2 with BURG: duplicate Windows entries, how do I remove one?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 8537 / 2 Years ago, sat, april 9, 2022, 8:41:09

I have a dual boot system with Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7, using GRUB2 (with Burg) as boot loader.

For some reason, the Windows installation shows up twice in the boot menu:

Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0-24-generic

Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0-24-generic (recovery mode)

Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)

Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda2)

If I look in my partition table, /dev/sda2 is C: of the Windows installation, and /dev/sda1 is the "System Reserved" partition (which, IIRC, is Windows' own bootloader). Furthermore, gparted shows /dev/sda2 - but no other partitions - with a boot flag:

enter image description here

What is going on here? I'd like to have only the entries for Ubuntu and one entry for Windows in my boot menu - how do I remove one of them?

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bathtusain

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answered 2 Years ago lassrake · Accepted Answer

You are correct that Windows 7 puts it's "boot" partition on /dev/sda1 by default, but it is possible to get Win 7 to put the everything on its "root" partition too -- e.g. by installing to a pre-formatted NTFS partition.

Perhaps you have tweaked Windows in the past such that the bootloader/bootable flag went on /dev/sda2? Can you successfully boot from both Windows entries? If so, it's safe to delete one of them.

How to remove the entries

Danger!

This may make your Windows unbootable; to follow the steps below you'll have to insert sudo where appropriate and make sure the NTFS partition is mounted read-write beforehand.



cd /mnt/where-o-where-my-ntfs-be

rm -rf bootmgr Boot BOOTSECT.BAK Recovery

cd && umount /mnt/ntfs1

update-grub

That should do it - obviously I haven't tried on my dual-boot system(s). Please let me know if it doesn't work and I'll either give you more dangerous methods or maybe look in the grub source to see how it detects Windows partitions for a definitive answer.