Bootloader not appearing in bios after multiboot windows reinstallation

User Support
1

Hi All

Perhaps this is what I deserve from multibooting Windows and Qubes on the same drive, but I digress. After a Windows reinstallation, my QubesOS bootloader does not appear in the bios.

I’ve had this issue in the past and used the efibootmgr command on installation media- fixing what I thought was the same problem with “efibootmgr -v -c -L QubesOS -l /Efi/qubes/grubx64 -d /dev/sdb5(correct drive)”. This had the result of putting the entry in the bios boot devices, but it did not boot into the operating system when selected and gave an error. The drive is encrypted, for what it’s worth.

I’m not sure why this would fix this issue the first time yet not subsequently. Any ideas? Already put a few hours into troubleshooting to no avail.

Cheers.

2

From the installation media, can you try a:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

or

gdisk -l /dev/sda

and share the output?

3

Hi Chris

Here is the result of fdisk -l /dev/sda(sdb)

Changing “efibootmgr -v -c -L QubesOS -l /Efi/qubes/grubx64 -d /dev/sdb5” to suit sdb6 or sdb7 (ie efibootmgr -v -c -L QubesOS -l /Efi/qubes/grubx64.efi -d /dev/sdb6(7)) has not worked.

Cheers

PXL_20230314_234741433
PXL_20230314_2347414331512×2016 1.38 MB

4

Can you try:

mkdir -p /mnt/foo
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/foo
find /mnt/foo | grep grubx64.efi

?

If you see an:

/mnt/foo/EFI/qubes/grubx64.efi

then I think it should be:

 efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -p 1 -L "QUBES" -l '\EFI\qubes\grubx64.efi'

Disclaimer: This is a guess – verify it and read the documentation for efibootmgr.

Edit: My guess is that you are looking for the EFI partition (/dev/sdb1) …

5

Thanks for your help Chris, here are the results:

PXL_20230315_020302475
PXL_20230315_0203024753024×4032 2.9 MB

It seems as if reinstalling windows overwrote the Qubes bootloader- where should I go from here?

Cheers.