Windows 10 removed grub menu

Ask Fedora
1

Basically, I have fedora on a partition. I made another partition and installed windows 10 on it. Now, the grub menu has disappeared and I cannot log into fedora!

Solutions I tried but failed:

I ran this into cmd: bcdedit /set {bootmrg} \EFI\fedora\grubx64.efi

I also tried \EFI\grub\grubx64.efi

Note: I have the windows boot manager enabled

Please help me.

2

Pretty sure that you have to boot a live ISO to get access and then restore GRUB. Windows is a virus that will take over your computer. When I Googled the title of this thread there was AI info. Don’t know if it is correct…

Give Google a try… Google the exact title of this thread and you should get something like this…

Screenshot at 2025-12-17 15-34-07
Screenshot at 2025-12-17 15-34-07684×700 60.1 KB

The commands in the “Reinstall GRUB” part are getting cut off because of the screenshot.

1 Like
3

Sorry for being lazy and maybe someone else can chime in with the exact commands necessary.

4

This page may be of help.

installing grub2

5

$ grub2-installb /dev/sda

Error: failed to get canonical path of “LivesOS_rootfs”

Also, I tried to mount /boot/efi (which in my case is /dev/sda1) onto the live usb and found out that /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi actually exists, so I don’t know what exactly is wrong with mh device tbh but I HATE windows for what it’s doing

6

This might be an easier repair then.

In the live USB, can you run the command efibootmgr in a terminal and show the output?

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7

This happened to me with both Windows 10 and 11 on Dell systems. I was able to use Dell’s UEFI to repair the corrupted entries for Fedora by comparing with the other system.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44919190/windows-equivalent-to-efibootmgr has a detailed response that tells you how to use bcdedit in Windows to repair corrupt entries, etc. My workaround was to remove Windows (my only use-case for Windows was debugging issues in PDF’s generated by Windows users).

8

“EFI variables are not supported on this system” is the result.

I guess the problem is that with the live iso it thinks I want to check the efi of the live usb itself

9

No, the EFI settings belong to the computer (specifically the BIOS’s NVRAM), not to the OS (Live ISO or otherwise). Any OS (live or not) running on that computer should produce the same result.

I haven’t seen that error message before though, so that’s puzzling.

  1. Does sudo efibootmgr do anything different?
  2. Have you definitely booted the live ISO in EFI mode? (i.e. “Compatibility Mode” or similar in the BIOS settings should be turned off)
10

My computer’s bios is pretty basic so there aren’t any options for “compatibility mode”. Also, yes, I have just tried using sudo and had the same error

11

OK, I’m not sure the cause of this.

You could try the guide to reinstall GRUB using the live ISO, though I’m wondering if this will fail at step 9 if there are problems accessing the EFI variables on your system.

12

Step 5 in your website: sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt -o subvol=root

Result for me:

mount: /mnt: fsconfig() failed ext4: Unknown parameter ‘subvol’.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

13

That command is for BTRFS, but the error message says your partition is formatted as ext4.

Two possibilities I can think of:

  1. Is /dev/sda2 the root partition of your Fedora install, or is it actually the /boot partition? Normally a fresh install would have /dev/sda1 as the EFI partition, /dev/sda2 as the boot partition, and /dev/sda3 as root. If so, then modify the command to use /dev/sda3.

  2. If /dev/sda2 really is the root partition, did you format it as EXT4 rather than the default BTRFS during the install? If you don’t know, the answer is probably “no”. But if it’s “yes”, the mount it using sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt.

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14

In my case, yes, /dev/sda2 is the root partition formatted as ext4.

As for /dev/sda1, it is my /boot/efi partition

Ad for /boot, I never set its partition in thr fedora installation process.

Anyways, your command worked and I will continue the steps now

15

THE GUIDE WORKED AND GRUB IS BACK!!!

Tysm!

3 Likes
16

Even though the problem has been solved, here’s a little tip.

Windows always does this with other existing operating systems, so for dual-boot setups, always:

  1. Install Windows.
  2. Then install Linux.

I used to have dual-boot setups for a while and never had any problems with this approach (in terms of installation; this does not refer to Windows itself as a problem).

And here’s another tip:
Whatever you need Windows for, check out “Winboat.” (winboat.app)
It’s still version 0.9, but it’s fully functional for my purposes, including USB passthrough if you use Docker instead of Podman (but this is also coming for Podman they say).
And the setup doesn’t require any special knowledge; it was super easy to install.