After an automated repair run in EasyRE, users of a dual-boot system may find that their boot menu has been reset to the stock Windows bootloader and the dual-boot menu is no longer available.
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Why dual-boots disappear after running EasyRE
To understand why this happens, consider that EasyRE is a completely automated and comprehensive system repair utility. Typically, users resort to EasyRE and its automated repair only after exhausting the usual array of recovery options, at which point EasyRE has one and only one goal: get the targeted Windows installation back up and running without data loss.
EasyRE doesn’t (and can’t) know what you like the boot menu to look like or differentiate between a customized bootloader that you consider correct vs one that isn’t, i.e. it assumes that anything that does not result in the BIOS ⇨ Windows Bootloader ⇨ Windows sequence (without any intermediate steps or pauses) is incorrect and a sign of a system that needs repair. It can’t infer whether a 3rd party component or modification to the system bootloader is a welcome deviation from that sequence or a failed 3rd party bootloader integration (or even a bootesctor virus).
Additionally, while there are perhaps an infinite ways to break a correctly configured Windows installation, there are only a handful of provably correct configurations, of which your machine’s post-EasyRE state is hopefully one. An additional assumption is that at any given time, uncustomizing a system is several orders of magnitude more difficult than customizing it in the first place; for example, that re-installing a 3rd party boot component is easier than removing said component, especially if it’s misbehaving.
To that end, EasyRE focuses on getting the system installation you targeted for recovery back up and running with as minimal deviations from a clean Windows installation as possible in the boot sequence, and this results in the loss of dual-boot configurations.
Getting a dual-boot back up-and-running
Thankfully, once a system has been restored into a working state where at least one Windows operating system can be booted into and started up successfully, getting a dual-boot back up-and-running is a simple enough matter.
Dual-Boot Recovery with EasyBCD
NeoSmart Technologies, authors of Easy Recovery Essentials, also develops a multiple award-winning boot editing tool: EasyBCD. EasyBCD is free for personal, at-home use, and can be used to quickly and easily restore a dual-boot once you are back in any version of Windows (Windows XP and Windows Server included).
After downloading EasyBCD, follow the guide on adding bootloader entries with EasyBCD to configure the boot menu once more with an entry for Windows, Linux, BSD, macOS, or other 3rd party tools. EasyBCD works with the Windows bootloader and does not replace it, at no point does a 3rd party bootloader take over your system when EasyBCD is used.
3rd Party Boot Integrations
If you had a 3rd party boot component installed, such as an external bootloader like GRUB/GRUB2 or a menu providing access to system recovery/restore such as Acronis or Macrium Reflect’s boot-time helpers, please follow the section in that software’s user manual on installing the boot-time helper. The procedure should be identical to the initial installation of that product’s boot menu integration as after running EasyRE that bootloader component should have been fully uninstalled.