Dual boot option dissapeared

[ivankata]

Hello,

I used to have a dual boot with WIndows 11 & Mint. Yesterday I tried to format and clean install my Mint, so I did go to create a bootable USB and choose Something else for installation type. Then I choose my partitions , formatted them and installed my Mint again there.

Since then when my laptop starts, I can't see the dual boot option and my mint starts directly

Do you know if there is a way to show again my dual boot menu or windows is gone for good?

P.S.
I also added boot efi in my partition - not sure what that was, but might be something related

[rene]

Usually a dual-boot Grub menu is automatic, so...

First possibility would indeed be this no longer being a dual-boot, i.e., you having overwritten the Windows install. This seems unlikely though if you explicitly did things via the Something Else menu. If you post output of sudo fdisk -l we can see if at least the Windows partitions are still there.

A probably more likely second possibility if that you reinstalled Mint after setting the BIOS to Legacy rather than UEFI mode whereas Windows was installed in UEFI mode, or maybe vice versa: both systems should be installed in the same mode for a normal dual-boot. inxi -Fxz will show Legacy/UEFI-mode somewhere.

A third possibility is a more innocent one: I was recently in a thread where for some or other reason GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false was missing from the file /etc/default/grub. If that's the case, you can with e.g. xed admin:///etc/default/grub add that line and after saving the file run sudo update-grub: you should then see Windows being found and would on reboot be able to boot it again from Grub.

[Cobrin]

As above, update grub.

You've installed Mint clean, grub hasn't searched for any other OS installs at this stage. When you update grub it'll pick up Windows bootloader and add it to the list, on the next reboot it'll be there to choose from. It's all good, that's normal behaviour in this situation, windows hasn't gone anywhere.

[ivankata]

Here is the output of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

Code: Select all

/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048    206847    204800   100M Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p2    206848    239615     32768    16M Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3    239616 280765518 280525903 133,8G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p4 498278400 500117503   1839104   898M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p5 280766464 320544767  39778304    19G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p6 320544768 328357887   7813120   3,7G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p7 328357888 498278399 169920512    81G Linux filesystem

Looking at it may be I did ovverwrite my windows and now I have 2 mints?

[rene]

Well, it's looking rather debatable but in essence we don't know yet. Unexpectedly all partitions seem to (now) have Linux type. Frankly, I don't believe that's something the installer would do even if you were to format the partitions as e.g. ext4 -- but Mint 21 is using a new installer which I suppose may...

Let's anyway just check manually. Partitions 1, 2 and 3 are likely the (former, potentially) Windows partitions, 4 is the ESP and 5, 6 and 7 are assumed part of your Linux install. You can from lsblk see which partitions are mounted where; assumption is that p4 will be on /boot/efi, p5 on /, p6 is a swap partition, p7 perhaps on /home.

Let's manually see first what's on p1: sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt and if that doesn't complain, ls /mnt to see what's there; sudo umount /mnt to unmount it again, and repeat the same cycle with /dev/nvme0n1p3.

If the partitions fail to mount or the ls /mnt command show only a lost+found then I'm afraid to say that yes, you reformatted your Windows partitions and Windows is gone: you'd want to reinstall any and all (I'd use the Windows installer to remove all partitions and let it install in the resulting free space, then only later reinstall Linux "alongside" as a regular dual-boot; this provides for the most canonical setup).

If on the other hand the ls /mnt commands show your Windows install to still be there we'd want to change partition types after which supposedly your dual-boot would be found again. I also however somewhat doubt that os-prober would mind the non-Windows partition types, i.e., that it wouldn't find your Windows install anyway if it were still there, so let us for now assume that, yes, you're likely without Windows at the moment. See above as how to look...

[ivankata]

Code: Select all

lsblk

Code: Select all

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1     259:0    0 238,5G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   100M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 133,8G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p4 259:4    0   898M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p5 259:5    0    19G  0 part /
├─nvme0n1p6 259:6    0   3,7G  0 part [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p7 259:7    0    81G  0 part /home

Code: Select all

valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$ sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
[sudo] password for valeri:         
valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$  ls /mnt
lost+found
valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$ ^C
valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$ sudo umount /mnt
valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$ sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
valeri@valeri-BOHB-WAX9:~$ ls /mnt
ls: cannot open directory '/mnt': Permission denied

Looks like i did formatted my windows indeed

[Cobrin]

Oh wow, I didn't expect that. Sorry to hear.

[rene]

Mmm. The Linux partitions are as expected, and the display of p1 clearly says that's been formatted -- but that was just a 100M "boot-type" partition anyway, and the "permission denied" for p3 says there's in fact something there. Admittedly seemingly not an NTFS filesystem -- but it's still strange that you'd be getting that there if not on p1 so can you retry with the below?

Code: Select all

sudo umount /mnt && sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt && sudo ls -ld /mnt && sudo ls -l /mnt

It's grasping at straws at this point, and yes, all's undoubtedly gone -- but let's make very, very sure.

[ivankata]

Thanks all! I re-installed my windows back. It was gone for good
And then re-installed my mint next to it again. I'll be more careful next time

[rene]

You in any case now have the experience that even if something goes badly wrong you're still able to get it back up Cheers...

[cretsiah]

Thanks all! I re-installed my windows back. It was gone for good
And then re-installed my mint next to it again. I'll be more careful next time

thats great .... cant stress enough LABELS on disks....