Cannot Boot, BIOS thinks my install is a windows boot manager?

[UrinalDeuce]

Hello, I am relatively new to linux so please excuse me if I am slow, been running Endeavour for about a month ish now and loving it but today I encountered an issue.

What I have done before this happened;

I plugged in a new SSD into my PC because I wanted to set it up for dual booting Windows 10 LTSC and Endeavour because atm CAD software I use does not have reliable support for linux whatsoever and I play alot of GMOD and linux does not have rawinput it requires some windows stuff which causes alot of input lag for me in that game (thats the extent of my knowledge of it) so unfortunately I need Windows.

I unplugged my old W10 Pro Drive, I have no intent to update that to W11 or change it over to LTSC at this point I have always had my Endeavour install in my 2nd m2 slot. I didnt touch it, I plugged the new SSD into my 1st m2 slot there was a SSD password that I forgot its an old repurposed SSD off a laptop my Dad had so I have to get him to type it in and figure that out a different time.

In the meantime, I tried to boot into my Endevour to come to see a blue windows screen saying it couldnt find system32 or something? Which confused me because I ONLY HAVE my Endevour drive and my movies HDD plugged in at this point and in the bios it is not displaying as UEFI OS Something Something which it usually does? (Ive never payed too much attention to it) instead its saying it is a Windows Boot Manager? With a big blue screen when I boot.

I have followed this guide, I believe this man was having the same issue.

How to rescue systemd-boot: missing UEFI entry

The issue described in Windows erased Systemd-boot entries in UEFI appears also on a MSI Laptop. Following the steps to resolve it, the Linux Boot Manager entry is successfully restored but no entry for EndeavourOS is available to select in the menu when booting. The missing entry corresponds to efibootmgr not showing it. In the past under grub, --force did the trick: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=endeavouros-2632 --force --verbose That same proble…

Inside chroot I was able to do “reinstall kernels” however when I try “bootctl install” it returns as

[root@EndeavourOS /]# bootctl install
Running in a chroot, enabling --graceful.
Couldn’t find EFI system partition, skipping.

“bootctl” itself returns as

[root@EndeavourOS /]# bootctl
Couldn’t find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot/ or /efi/.
Alternatively, use --esp-path= to specify path to mount point.
System:
Not booted with EFI

fdisk -l

/dev/nvme0n1p1 4096 4198399 4194304 2G EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 4198400 481663187 477464788 227.7G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 481663188 500118125 18454938 8.8G Linux swap

This is how I mounted the drive

[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mkdir /mnt/boot
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mkdir /mnt/efi
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/efi
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt

and then I ran “arch-chroot /mnt”

Help would be greatly appreciated, I am happy to provide more info if necassary. If i have not provided enough I am still very new just trying my best

[ng0177]

Another way for the future is to keep an Debian install in parallel as its bootloader never gets ditched and install refind from it, then go into BIOS and reactive EnOS. It has worked over the years for me very reliably.

[cactux]

Could you boot up your live usb and post the following:

lsblk -f

efibootmgr

[UrinalDeuce]

[root@EndeavourOS /]# lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 squashfs 4.0
sda
├─sda1
└─sda2 ntfs 6TB HDD 4A40B5FE40B5F0B5
sdb
├─sdb1
└─sdb2 ntfs 2TB HDD 920E549D0E547BE3
sdc
├─sdc1 swap 1 78d9e693-29d8-4204-985c-aa2ecb730aa8
└─sdc2 ext4 1.0 60884acb-dde0-49c2-895d-77e23d422355
sdd
└─sdd1 vfat FAT32 EOS_202503 1B03-374C
nvme0n1
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat FAT32 E13A-D29E
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4 1.0 endeavouros e7a8ee61-810d-4e68-8434-4a9be87f2e06 36.9G 78% /
└─nvme0n1p3 swap 1 swap 67664ef9-fb5a-437d-8bcd-6ee3230b3c08

[root@EndeavourOS /]# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0001
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,246958f5-9a42-4e8d-9f06-ba86b31bf6a3,0x1000,0x400000)/\EFI\Microsoft\
Boot\bootmgfw.efi0000424f
Boot0002* UEFI: KingstonDataTraveler 3.0PMAP, Partition 1 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0xc
,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/USB(2,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x1a6693bd,0x800,0x73977c0)0000424f

[dalto]

@UrinalDeuce

[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mkdir /mnt/boot
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mkdir /mnt/efi
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/efi
[root@EndeavourOS liveuser]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt

This is a mess.

First, you should never have to use mkdir when mounting your system for recovery. If you do, something is wrong and you should stop.

Second, you need to mount them in the opposite order:

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/efi
sudo arch-chroot /mnt

Otherwise the root system is mounted on top of the ESP partition and you need the opposite of that.

[UrinalDeuce]

As soon as I can get back in, I am going to be setting rEFInd up. It looks great, thanks for the suggestion

[dalto]

@UrinalDeuce

As soon as I can get back in, I am going to be setting rEFInd up.

Just a warning that this is adding an additional layer of complexity on top of everything and another point of failure.

This isn’t something you should do unless you have the experience to manage it all.

[ricklinux]

Why switch to something totally different instead of dealing with the original problem?

[UrinalDeuce]

Once I deal with the original problem, I would like to set this up

[ricklinux]

I’ve used it before but I prefer grub using btrfs fs.

[UrinalDeuce]

Thanks for the response, Ill keep it in mind and make sure to do alot of reading and learning if I decide to dive into it. It might not even suit me anyways

My priority is still just being able to get into my install at the current moment, learning what went wrong how it went wrong and how to fix it

[ricklinux]

Were you using systemd-boot?

[UrinalDeuce]

This resolved not seeing anything with bootctl here are the new results,

“bootctl”

System:
Not booted with EFI

Available Boot Loaders on ESP:
ESP: /efi
File: ├─/efi//EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi (systemd-boot 258-4-arch)
└─/efi//EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI (systemd-boot 258-4-arch)

Boot Loader Entry Locations:
ESP: /efi (, $BOOT)
config: /efi//loader/loader.conf
token: endeavouros

Default Boot Loader Entry:
type: Boot Loader Specification Type #1 (.conf)
title: EndeavourOS (6.17.1-arch1-1)
id: 8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a-6.17.1-arch1-1.conf
source: /efi//loader/entries/8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a-6.17.1-arch1-1.conf (on the EFI System P>
sort-key: endeavouros-6.17.1-arch1-1
version: 6.17.1-arch1-1
machine-id: 8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a
linux: /efi//8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a/6.17.1-arch1-1/linux
initrd: /efi//8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a/6.17.1-arch1-1/initrd
options: nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=e7a8ee61-810d-4e68-8434-4a9be87f2e06 resume=UUID=67664ef>
lines 1-24/24 (END)…skipping…
System:
Not booted with EFI

Available Boot Loaders on ESP:
ESP: /efi
File: ├─/efi//EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi (systemd-boot 258-4-arch)
└─/efi//EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI (systemd-boot 258-4-arch)

Boot Loader Entry Locations:
ESP: /efi (, $BOOT)
config: /efi//loader/loader.conf
token: endeavouros

Default Boot Loader Entry:
type: Boot Loader Specification Type #1 (.conf)
title: EndeavourOS (6.17.1-arch1-1)
id: 8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a-6.17.1-arch1-1.conf
source: /efi//loader/entries/8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a-6.17.1-arch1-1.conf (on the EFI System Partition)
sort-key: endeavouros-6.17.1-arch1-1
version: 6.17.1-arch1-1
machine-id: 8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a
linux: /efi//8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a/6.17.1-arch1-1/linux
initrd: /efi//8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a/6.17.1-arch1-1/initrd
options: nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=e7a8ee61-810d-4e68-8434-4a9be87f2e06 resume=UUID=67664ef9-fb5a-437d-8bcd-6ee3230b3c08 systemd.machine_id=8685acfabd9548d6b1fec9a469be1b5a

[UrinalDeuce]

I was indeed, now its just going to a windows recovery screen.

(edit) I didnt tinker with any of this stuff at all, whatever is default was all there. All I have really done is install basic programs I use, some games and CAD software.

[ricklinux]

I would follow what @dalto has told you.

[dalto]

@UrinalDeuce

Not booted with EFI

This probably means you didn’t boot the ISO in UEFI mode. If you don’t have a UEFI option from the boot menu, you can disable legacy booting in the BIOS.

[UrinalDeuce]

I dont understand what you mean by this, how do I change that. I have disabled secure boot, I have a Asus X99 BIOS there doesnt seem to be an option?

[cactux]

@UrinalDeuce

Not booted with EFI

You need to make sure that you have only UEFI boot mode enabled in BIOS. No Legacy, no CSM.

The boot up your live usb in UEFI mode.

[ng0177]

I disagree. Fixing is very difficult. The pair of Debian & rEFInd plus setting boot order in BIOS always work, is a snap to install and works around the (edit: re-appearing every couple of months) problem seemlessly.

[UrinalDeuce]

CSM is disabled, there is no option for Legacy Boot from what I can see.

The only UEFI boot mode I can find is inside of secure boot which returns saying it can’t boot because of unauthorised changes as expected.

I am using an ASUS X99 Motherboard, I am lost