So, I made my bootable EndevourOS image. I installed it on my secondary SSD, while I have Win11 on my primary SSD (need it for my job).

When I installed it I booted it up and everything was ok. A bit confusing, but ok.

Wanted to get into Windows again because I needed to work on something for a design (Adobe programs), next thing I know: my computer isn’t recognizing my Windows drive…

It’s there. I can see it on the “disks” app on EndevourOS, I can mount the disk and even see my files in there. But it just won’t boot.

Read the documentation and it mentions an “os-prober”, that I needed to change GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false in the etc/default/drub file… I don’t have that file anywhere in my system…

I installed os-prober, nothing. I searched any other folder with a similar name and checked files… The only file with a mention of os-prober is grub.d that says “if GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=xtrue then random warning”, but that is a set of instructions (i think), not the actual file.

I don’t think I should have tried EOS/Arch when I’ve been learning Linux for only 2 days, can anybody help me with this? Thank you for any answers in advance.

  • redimk@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
    0·
    1 year ago

    That’s the problem not even the bios is reading windows after the EOS installation. I keep changing the order of things but when I boot from the other SSD it just says “checking media” and then “failed” and it gets looped over and over again.

    But I can still see the windows drives and partitions from EOS… It’s the weirdest ting that I’ve seen… Would you recommend just doing a clean install of everything in that case?

    • Yuki@kutsuya.dev
      1·
      1 year ago

      It sounds like your EFI partition got fucked somehow. You could boot a live usb with windows tool like Hirens or Sergei and fix it in there. There are tools in Sergei to fix these issues, I sometimes do this at my job.

      • redimk@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        This is what I’m thinking happened. I already said this in another comment but will expand here because this comments refers specifically to the EFI partition. Here’s the weird thing, 3 days ago, I had 2 SSDs:

        • 1 with 3 partitions of Windows, one EFI part., one recovery part, and the regular C: local where my files were.
        • On my secondary SSD, I had Fedora installed. If I’m correct, I had a /boot, and /home(?) don’t remember if anything else.

        I decided to do a clean install of Win11. When I did, I had both SSDs connected to my laptop, and when I finished the installation, this was how it was divided:

        • 1st SSD: one, full 2TB C: Local disk, with no partitions.
        • 2nd SSD: One EFI partition, one recovery partition, and one “empty” partition.

        It was highly confusing, because I thought I had Fedora there, my immediate thought was that Win11 just straight up ravaged both my SSDs and decided “fuck it, let’s install wherever the fuck I want” and it did. HOWEVER I could still get into Fedora and use it normally. Still had all the apps and programs I installed, everything was correct. So I assumed the drive still belonged to Fedora.

        When I installed EOS, I chose “Erase Disk” on the secondary SSD (the one with Fedora, the one that had this “EFI partition” that didn’t have before. I think when I erased that SSD, I erased the Windows EFI partition and couldn’t boot as a result. And that’s why the BIOS was not recognizing the OS, but at the same time I could just mount the SSD in EOS and just look t my files normally. So I think that’s what happened, but honestly I’m not even sure of how it happened.

        • dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Yeah it sounds like you messed up your boot partition. I’m not sure with EFI partitions, but when I used to mess up my legacy boots, I would recover using the windows recovery tools. Some command that would recover them. Again, I’m not sure abilout EFI partition, but maybe this is all you needed.

          Anyway, good luck on your next try. I for one go with the safe route of removing drive(s) until I have the drives I need the install process to know about, you know when first installing an OS. I just don’t have the time for reinstalling things if something does go wrong.

    • nottheengineer@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      Sounds like there’s something wrong with your windows EFI partition in that case.

      I don’t know how to fix that short of a reinstall. If you do reinstall, make sure to unplug (yes, that’s actually neccessary) all drives except the one you want to install windows on, otherwise the installer is almost guaranteed to fiddle around with them despite you not selecting them.

    • Cornelius@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      The checking media message is your bios trying to boot from some external network drive. I had that issue for the longest, and I realized that I misunderstood how the boot order actually worked.

      Try swapping your boot order around to opposite how it is currently? That’s what I did and it solved my problem

      • redimk@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        I tried all orders, there were 2 Samsung SSDs (primary and secondary), and another one called “EFI” something… When I changed the order to SSD #1 it opened EndevourOS, when I changed to SSD #2 it said “checking media… failed”, and when I put the “EFI” as the first in the order, it just restarted and went again to EndevourOS. At the end, I had to do the easiest and fastest thing: start over.

        I think that when I installed Win11, it took part of my Fedora partition somehow, I’m not even sure if that’s what happened and if that is what actually happened I have no clue how it happened, but right before erasing my secondary SSD to install EOS, there was a mention of a Windows “EFI” partition there, even though I could still get into Fedora. So when I erased that, I think I erased something related to Windows that I shouldn’t have erased