How to repair windows bootloader

wertciu

Commendable
Oct 4, 2016
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I have an old laptop dual-booted with windows 10 and linux mint, I deleted the linux partition from within windows, fully aware that doing so would also delete grub, which had replaced windows' MBR. So after resizing partitions I rebooted the computer and put my windows repair disc in so I could patch the MBR. But when the repair disc had finish booting I was presented with only one option: to fix everything automatically, which to windows means do nothing.
The repair disc was not damaged, and to make sure I created another repair disc on another computer and that one didn't work either.
I then downloaded windows installation media using micro$oft's media creation tool, and to my displeasure found the iso file to be 4.8gb, which would not fit on a dvd. I tried to use a usb, but the laptop refuses to boot from it (maybe its too old).

What do I do? Is it possible to reinstall grub without linux? Or is there a third-party bootloader or repair utility that I could use?
 
"to fix everything automatically, which to windows means do nothing."
Wrong...

You can use the disk to repair the boot issues with windows automatically. Did you even try it?

Also, you have to set the BIOS to BOOT from the USB drive but I've had MANY, MANY experiences that prove booting from USB is hit or miss depending on the computer and USB device.
 


Yes, I tried the automatic repair utility, and it came back with an 'unable to detect the problem' error, just like it has in the past for me.
And I did set the BIOS to boot from the usb drive, and it didn't work, not sure why.
Part of what makes this so difficult is that I've done all this before, and had no problems. I don't know what changed that the repair disc would fail to provide the options it usually does.
 


I downloaded the program, but it was an executable file and not a iso. I did some searching and found this: https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/ but it failed to resolve the problem.