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Recovering Deleted Windows Boot Partition

·2 mins
Windows Bootloader
Table of Contents

Reason #

If you’re dual-booting Windows and Linux. You know how finicky it can be having the two on the same disk. Not sure if this is the case, but Windows likes having a disk all to itself, and sometimes this can lead to issues whenever updating Windows. In my case, the boot partition was gone and I would get the BSOD. This was because the boot partition was gone. In this guide, I’ll show you how to get it back.

Get media installation ready #

You can either download the Windows installation media from their website here. This is for Windows 10, but 10 or 11 will do. Or you can download Ventoy. Which allows you to have multiple iso files on one USB stick!

Creating Boot Partition #

Now in my case, I was able to create a boot partition of size 300MiB within Gparted. You can use any disk tool. But format it to FAT32. This will be allocated for the new Windows partition.

Run the windows media installation tool #

There is a great video that goes through commands within the command prompt. Now this video is a little all over the place but you can start the video at 10:30.

Here’s the run down #

You’re going to go into disk part. Select the correct disk. Then select the partition we made (300MiB one). Label it with a letter, in this case pick g.

# Go into diskpart
diskpart

# List the disks
list disk

# Select the correct disk where we want to fix the boot partition
select disk <number_on_screen>

# List the partitions within that disk
list partitions

# Select the partition we just created
select partition <number_on_screen>

# View the assigned letters
list volume

# Put a label on it. This can be any letter as long as it's not being used
assign letter g:

In the video, Chris assigns the c label to the Windows root partition. I don’t believe this is necessary, it’s only preference. However, you may change it like in the video.

Create boot files #

bcdboot c:\windows /s g: /f ALL

Then go into the g labeled partition. And run this command to check

g:
bootrec \scanos

In the video, Chris is successful, as it found the Windows installation related to the root partition. For me however, it was not. But once I restarted my computer, it turned out fine!

That’s it! #

Now you’re UEFI should display the Windows Boot Manager!

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