I’m a new to Linux. I was trying to set up dual boot, but now have no way to get back into my windows 11 install. How does one go about adding Windows 11 to Grub, so that i can access my Windows 11 efi and boot back into Windows? I thought that maybe it broke my bootloader for windows, but repaired it and it still doesn’t show up on in my bios. So i’m guessing something in Fedora is blocking it. I don’t know enough about Linux to figure out what i have to do. So any help would be amazing.
If i type "sudo os-prober " it hangs for a second and then does nothing.
Let’s check what disk partitions you have on your system.
What is the output of lsblk -f?
Please post as preformatted text (on screen shots).
Which is the </> button.
Possibly a windows update enabled bitlocker.
It that is the case then fedora cannot read anything on the windows system and recovery would require disabling bitlocker.
After doing some googling. It sounds like the issue might be that Fedora was installed in legecy mode some how. So all i would have to do is reinstall it in theory to fix this?
This does not show an efi partition mounted at /boot/efi.
It does appear to show an efi partition at p1. Is that a windows efi partition?
Is it possible you installed fedora in legacy (MBR) boot mode?
That can be checked with cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars. If the result shows a directory then you are booting in efi mode. If it shows anything else then you are booting in MBR mode.
In the case where fedora is booting in MBR mode it would be impossible to boot windows 11 from grub since the 2 modes are incompatible for grub.
To fix that you would need to reinstall fedora and ensure that you select to boot the install media in uefi mode. (either set the bios to boot uefi only, or select the uefi mode for the usb device from the bios boot menu (usually F8-F11 for most systems))
If i type cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars it just says that there is no such file or directory
So it sounds like i need to reinstall and make sure it’s uefi Fedora. I’m kind of worried about messing up even more though, as i’m going to have to wipe these Fedora partitions. lol
When booted to the install media (in uefi mode), enable internet and install gparted.
Use gparted to remove nvme0n1p6 & nvme0n1p7.
Then perform an automatic install.
Fedora should recreate the needed partitions, and use the existing efi partition for /boot/efi.
Unless the user does something abnormal It does not wipe out the windows boot loader but adds the fedora efi software as well.
That allowed me to get my windows 11 install back, so thank you very much! I have another question though. I now see two “Fedora” options in my bios under “boot device” when pressing f12 to get into my boot manager.
If i go into either one. It shows the same stuff, multi kernels for Fedora and my windows install. Booting Fedora up on both seems to be different though
If i use cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars both still give the no such file or directory errors, but doing ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars shows like 100 files on one of the boot devices and only like 3 on the other. What does this mean?
$ cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
cat: /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/: Is a directory
The listing from lsblk shows what I would expect for an efi system.
You should not need to use the bios boot manager to boot.
When you do it is normal to see 2 fedora entries.
If you do not select that, does fedora boot or does it boot directly into windows?
For most cases, when booting without using the bios boot manager, it should display the grub boot menu where you may select which kernel or os to boot.
If you boot into Fedora in EFI mode with a live system, open a terminal window and type ‘efibootmgr’ you should see both the boot order, and what efi files each boot manager target points to. When you want to boot your Fedora OS, you should be booting the one that ultimately points to \EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi.
Would turning CSM back on maybe make Grub show up? I turned it off to install Fedora this time to be extra safe and make sure it went into EFI. I don’t have the live system usb at this moment to try this out as i put windows 11 back on my only USB stick. So will have to try this later when i feel like taking a risk again lol. It does boot directly into Windows 11 if i don’t go into the boot manger. I have to select one of the boot devices in my bios to bring up grub.
In that case recovery is fairly simple.
boot to fedora then run sudo dnf reinstall grub2\* shim\*. This should fully reconfigure the boot loader and allow fedora to boot with grub.
There is a well known issue that whenever a windows repair/recovery is performed it wipes out the grub boot from the drive and thus repair of grub is also required after the fact.
Thank you all very much for being so patient with me and helping me. I will try this later on tonight after dinner, a few other things and let you guys know if it fixes it and allows me to boot directly into Grub.
It would be a good idea to get some more and dedicate one for Windows install and one for Fedora install. You never know when you might need one of them in the future.
This didn’t do much, after rebooting it still went directly into windows 11. I just changed the boot order in bios and randomly picked one of the Fedora boot devices manually from my screenshot above to boot from. Since i don’t have a live install usb to check which one i am supposed to be booting from. Now it boots directly into GRUB.
Unless there is a way to check with out a live system usb and from the install itself?
Yeah. I have plans two buy two more. Since i almost got screwed over if something really did happen to my windows install. I didn’t know you couldn’t create a Windows 11 install USB from Linux. It just asks for drivers when you do it on Linux and trying to boot from the USB. lol So had to use a Windows 10 install to fix my Windows 11 boot manager when i thought something was wrong with it. Never again. I’m gonna make sure to have enough USBs to always have Windows 11 on one and always have a Fedora live USB.
