Windows 10: Access to EFI Partition

After the latest windows update, when I open file explorer, three extra drives were added besides the c drive. Winretool partition was assigned y drive, PBR partition was assigned x drive and ESP (efi system partition) was assigned e drive.

I was able to remove the y and x drives and they disappeared from file explorer. But the drive with the efi partition won't let me access it. It says that I have to go to security tab to access. When I go to properties, there is no security tab. Since the partition is fat32, I'm guessing I can't access the normal way. I've had this problem before but I can't remember the efi boot partition being one of them.

Any suggestions as to accessing the partition to remove the e drive tag?

:)

 

Move EFI partition

its to enable win 10 to update to its anniversary edition.. it cant do this due to lack of C drive space i have had a quick try with the trial version of easus.. it didnt seem to be able to do what i want..

i am assuming i cant just delete the efi partition but maybe i could.. as yet i havnt even figured out how to get into the bios of the thing.. maybe that should be my next step.. *Smile

diskpart could probably do it but figuring out how (it aint that user friendly) might be difficult without step by step instructions..

trog

 

Blank EFI Partition

I have an ASUS R558UR.

I had windows 10 installed on my laptop and I decided to again have a clean install of windows 10. I booted from USB and cleaned windows partition i.e. C drive and also cleaned EFI partition. I reformatted Drive and it had also created EFI partition of 100
MB. I installed windows on laptop and setted that up. After installing windows my laptop it started taking a long time to boot about 90 seconds but earlier it took only 7-10 seconds. After analysing everything I found that my EFI partition is blank.

Please suggest me how to write back EFI partition so as to reduce boot times.

Thanks in Advace.

 

How to access efi partition on windows 10?

Update

in Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows Server starting as of 2012 R2 you can use the following Powershell oneliner for getting Read-Write access to EFI partition:

start ((Get-Partition | ? IsSystem).AccessPaths[0])

Original answer

I have found more straightforward way of getting read/write access to EFI partition from Windows 10:

1. Open an Administrator Command Prompt window by right-clicking Start button and clicking on Command Prompt (Admin)
   
2. In the Command Prompt window, type mountvol, disregard help message in the beginning and notice the list of GUID-based paths of all volumes known to Windows, eg.:
   

1. GUID of EFI partition is one of those marked with "NO MOUNT POINT" description - in my case it was the first volume
   
2. type start \\?\Volume{.......-....-....-....-...........}\ (of course replace dots with the exact GUID from step #3) and new explorer window will pop up with the contents of EFI partition and read/write access to it - voila!