Windows does not show in GRUB after fedora reinstall

Ask Fedora
,
1

First of best wishes for the new year!

I decided to do a fresh install of Fedora, so I made a live USB and did an overwrite of my current Fedora install. My laptop has always been dual boot with Windows and I’ve had this issue before (but for the life of me I can’t find the solution again…), but as the title said after succesfully reinstalling Fedora, Windows Boot Manager is no longer in the GRUB. Nor in the BIOS Utility for that matter.

Some commands I used to check out the situation:
fdisk -l

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 953,87 GiB, 1024209543168 bytes, 2000409264 sectors
Disk model: HFM001TD3JX013N                         
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 48D32A4F-3D4B-477C-9A32-11A7ADEC0AFB

Device              Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 1548070912 1549299711    1228800   600M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1549299712 1551396863    2097152     1G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3     567296 1548069518 1547502223 737,9G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 1551396864 1999998975  448602112 213,9G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p8 1999998976 2000408575     409600   200M Windows recovery environm

Partition table entries are not in disk order.


Disk /dev/mapper/luks-b2edcc2d-f3c4-4353-8f7d-d0fec5be1e63: 213,89 GiB, 229667504128 bytes, 448569344 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/zram0: 8 GiB, 8589934592 bytes, 2097152 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

efibootmgr

BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002,0000
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000000120100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0001* Fedora	HD(1,GPT,dfce72d6-1d23-49f6-a358-902921acccc0,0x5c45b000,0x12c000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0002* Fedora	HD(1,GPT,dfce72d6-1d23-49f6-a358-902921acccc0,0x5c45b000,0x12c000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIM.EFI)0000424f

And also checking the disk manager GUI app, it seems the partition with Windows on it is not mounted after every start up…

I hope someone can help me. As much as I would like to switch to 100% Fedora, I still need some windows applications for my study…

Kind regards!

2

Did you by chance remove the existing efi partition and replace it? Did you maybe format the efi partition?

Please show us the output of lsblk -f so we can see the current partitioning and file system config.
The output of fdisk seems to indicate you may have replaced the efi partition since the 600M size is the current default fedora efi size while windows uses a smaller efi partition by default.

Realistically the windows partition should not be automatically mounted when booting linux. It is possible to do so but not automatic nor normally recommended.

3

Thanks for the quick reply.

Might very well be that I’ve been a bit too eager with the disk cleanup…

Here is the output for lsblk -f:

lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL  UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
zram0
                                                                             [SWAP]
nvme0n1
                                                                             
├─nvme0n1p1
│    vfat   FAT32        9BDB-36A7                             581,4M     3% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2
│    ext4   1.0          16e587b1-c314-4d2b-b28c-ce5d789d043e  624,4M    29% /boot
├─nvme0n1p3
│    ntfs         OS     1AA211DFA211BFE5                                    
├─nvme0n1p4
│    crypto 2            b2edcc2d-f3c4-4353-8f7d-d0fec5be1e63                
│ └─luks-b2edcc2d-f3c4-4353-8f7d-d0fec5be1e63
│    btrfs        fedora a317ccdd-43ec-480b-a92d-a2d08525acde  178,2G    16% /home
│                                                                            /
└─nvme0n1p8
     vfat   FAT32 MYASUS B483-5B8D

Thank you so much for your help!

4

This seems to show that there was at least one (probably 2) partitions before the beginning of nvme0n1p3, which would have been a hidden partition and the windows efi partition.
the partition currently labeled as nvme0n1p8 would have originally been nvme0n1p4 for the windows install.

The current drive ordering is
blank (~565248 sectors or ~282 MB)
p3
blank (1394 sectors)
p1
p2
p4
p8

I think the only way to recover booting windows may be to do a windows recovery process and possibly a reinstall.

5

Thanks for the input. While having a look at the windows recovery, i stumbled across this article:
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/command-prompt-fix-issues-your-boot-records/#page-header

Following the steps laid out here I was able to boot into windows again and have it in the UEFI boot manager again! So nothing lost and everything working again!

(well except having it show in grub, but that something I’ll work out later…)

6

The simple step of booting into fedora then running the command
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg should solve the issue with the grub menu.

Let us know if that does not fix it for you.