Repair Bootloader on Pop!_OS

Reason #

There have been many times where Windows, after an update, destroys my linux boot partition for whatever reason. (Windows things 😒). Which then leads me to be unable to boot up Linux. On this tutorial we’re going to fix that!

Note! #

This is for an EFI-based system. Use the following command to find out.

[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "Installed in UEFI mode" || echo "Installed in Legacy mode"

If you get Installed in UEFI mode, You’re good to go! Otherwise, go to this page to find more info.

Get Pop!_OS on USB #

Download Pop!_OS on a usb stick. You can use something like BalenaEtcher or even better Ventoy. Which allows you to have multiple iso files on one USB stick.

Find partition names #

lsblk

It should look something like this

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
zram0       251:0    0    16G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1     259:0    0   1.8T  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   976M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 878.9G  0 part /
├─nvme0n1p4 259:3    0    16M  0 part
└─nvme0n1p5 259:4    0  72.3G  0 part

Find the root partition and boot partition for Pop!_OS. In my case the root partition was on nvme0n1p2 and my boot partition is on nvme0n1p1.

Mount the partitions #

We’re first going to mount the root partition and then the boot partition. It should be done in this order! Following from my example…

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi

Run the final commands #

Do this line by line!

for i in dev dev/pts proc sys run; do sudo mount -R /$i /mnt/$i; done
sudo chroot /mnt
apt install --reinstall linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic
update-initramfs -c -k all
exit
sudo bootctl --path=/mnt/boot/efi install

Then reboot! Now you should be able to find your Pop!_OS boot partition again in your boot order!

I found my info on this page.