Windows 10: Deleted boot partitions, creating new EFI partition failed, next steps?

I have a few different drives in my computer, and recently installed Linux Mint (an OS I have used quite a bit) onto an nVme drive I salved from my Surface Pro 4 (dog ate it...).

Anyway, for a while I've had a weird issue when starting Windows, where it would give me two options to boot to different installations, even though there was only one. I was playing around in Disks for another purpose, and saw that there were two boot partitions on one of my ancillary drives, so I deleted them.

Anyway, long story short, apparently the boot partition for my Windows installation on my main Windows OS drive was on this secondary drive? So at this point, I can no longer boot to windows.

I made installation media and followed the directions here, but when I got to the last step, bcdboot M:\windows , it fails. So I googled that problem, tried another method using bootrec but ended up getting an Element not found error. Following another tutorial I ended up with a drives-not-distinguishable error (what the actual heck??), so at this point, I'm stuck.

I was thinking maybe I could at least back up my main Windows OS partition, to prevent data loss. I was also thinking I could maybe copy the main Windows partition to another drive, reinstall Windows, then move the partition back over?

Would this work? Other options? Am I just screwed? Thankfully I don't do any work in Windows, so if I have to do a fresh install it isn't a huge deal, but would be a bit of a pain in the rear.

submitted by /u/LorenWard
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:)

 

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

 

W7 Hard drive partition issue

to get rid of that 100 meg windows partition that setup creates for you on a new install on a blank hdd:

- press shift+f10 when on the partition management screen in setup <-- this opens a command prompt
- diskpart <-- start the windows command line partition management tool
- list disk <--- list the installed hdds in this computer for the next step
- select disk 0 <- might have to replace 0 with the number of the correct disk
- clean <-- this will erase all data on the disk you selected one step up- dont use the wrong disk!
- create partition primary <- creates a primary partition taking up all space on the drive, adjust the command if necessary
- exit, exit to exit diskpart and the command prompt
- click refresh in partition manager and select your newly created partition and install to that

 

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME after creating new EFI System Partition

I would probably have booted to a Windows install or recovery media to create the

EFI system partition by using Diskpart and the create par efi command with any modifiers necessary to make it fit in the correct location.

I know Linux can use a Microsoft EFI partition but I do know if Windows can use a Linux version.

Yes, the bcd listing which shows the boot manager and OS loader.

It may have been easier to use a third party partition manager to change the size of the EFI partition.

If you might need it, here are the details of an EFI partition from Diskpart.

Partition 2

Type : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b

Hidden : Yes

Required: No

Attrib : 0X8000000000000000

Offset in Bytes: 524288000

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

* Volume 3 FAT32 Partition 99 MB Healthy System