Discussing 2 window installations
Discussing 2 window installations
You are definitely capable of doing this. For every drive with an EFI bootable OS, it’s recommended to include its own ESP by default. This is since the ESP is a dedicated partition and must carry the GUID C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B. I’m not sure how to adjust it on Windows, but there are methods available. If you have a Linux live USB, switching the ID is straightforward using tools like "gdisk" or "gparted." Let me know if you’d like more details on the process.
I was preparing to share this information because I discovered a guide here: https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/fix-e...id-set-id/. I applied the steps and everything functioned correctly. The partition now appears as an EFI system partition in disk management, even disappearing from "My PC" after I renamed it to a system partition. After rebooting, I accessed Windows, checked Disk Management (still showing it as an EFI without a letter) but opened "My PC" again and saw it with the letter Y. The main issue is that it can't be opened due to permission restrictions, yet it shouldn't be visible at all. What caused this?
Great question! This likely stems from an EFI boot entry not being fully restored after the first time. I've faced a similar issue before, where files were in the correct location but recovery was tricky. It seems there might be a lingering configuration from assigning the letter Y to it. Windows sometimes gets confused about user exposure policies, even though volume settings suggest otherwise. You could try unassigning Y manually using diskpart by following the guide steps—list volumes, check for Y, then remove it. If that doesn't work, let me know and we can troubleshoot further.
I resolved it partially by applying the fix in the meantime. I discovered a workaround here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...50db6f0634. After executing "mountvol Y: /D" it functioned, I rebooted and the Y drive disappeared from both Explorer and DiskPart. However, the EFI partition remains improperly set up. You can observe under DiskPart that it appears as "hidden" rather than "system" (the one that should be visible), even after removing the letter assignment. I also re-applied the commands "set id=c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b override" and "gpt attributes=0x8000000000000000," but it still doesn’t stabilize.
Discovered another discussion on the forum (https://forums. that largely mirrors my actions but emphasized disconnecting the original drive once the whole setup is done. This aligns with what I aimed to prevent—I wanted everything ready before replacing the faulty SSD later. However, I’m unsure if I’m making a mistake or if the system truly requires removing the existing drive to let the new one appear in the BIOS menu. I suspect that without disconnecting it, I can’t switch to the other disk, even if the EFI partition is properly configured.
Well everyone, the situation just got resolved. Last night I left the computer running, but when I turned on the monitor there was no signal. It turns out the faulty SSD likely caused a crash overnight, which then disables itself until you actually shut it down and restart it. When I rebooted, the Windows boot manager couldn’t reach it, so it automatically switched to the new drive. So the broken SSD is finally out of the way during startup! It’s like it was acting up physically, kind of like disconnecting it yourself.
It seems the issue was resolved by the boot loader recovery process. Likely, the steps you took generated files for the ESP but didn’t set up an EFI boot entry. When you couldn’t boot from the faulty drive, the BIOS tried the next available drive and checked the ESP on that drive for a boot loader. This often means it simply picked up the first bootable device without a specific name in the menu. You can have any number of entries under "Windows Boot Manager" or similar—there are no limits. These entries are saved in BIOS memory as pointers to boot loader files, sometimes with extra parameters. The label can be anything, and repeated names are permitted.