saving grub from windows

lost your grub after installing windows? here is a simple way of getting it back.

[note: assuming windows being installed on top of ubuntu(using grub2) ]

1: boot from a live cd and open a terminal

2: sudo fdisk -l

this will show the partitioin table. Here is my partition table

Device Boot   Start         End              Blocks    Id  System

/dev/sda1                   63        771119      385528+   de  Dell Utility

/dev/sda2   *        772096   105629695    52428800   83  Linux

/dev/sda4       105631722   625141759   259755019    f   W95 Ext’d (LBA)

/dev/sda5       105631744   315355949   104862103    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda6       315356013   561134384   122889186    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda7       621142016   625141759      1999872   82   Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda8       561134448   621137159    30001356    83   Linux

3: mount the linux partition on which you want install the grub (sda8 in my case)

$sudo mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/

$sudo mount - -bind /dev /mnt/dev

$sudo mount - -bind /proc /mnt/proc

4: Now chroot into this environment

sudo chroot /mnt

[optional]if you want to change any default setting like timeout options… then look at /etc/default/grub

5: #grub-install /dev/sda

[ in case of error do #grub-install - -recheck /dev/sda ]

6: now unmount and reboot the system.

#exit

$sudo umount /mnt/dev

$sudo umount /mnt/proc

$sudo umount /mnt

$sudo reboot