Issues with duplicate entries in your UEFI setup across operating systems
Issues with duplicate entries in your UEFI setup across operating systems
First a joke, I've been using Linux as my daily driver for about 7 years now. It's funny that basically all my issues have been because of Windows and Dual Booting. *Old man shakes fist at sky* So recently Windows nuked my OSes after an update and I got mad enough that I just remove it completely from my computer. Now when I boot into my UEFI I see: How can I fix this? AFAIK Windows isn't on the NVMe drive at all, each one of those selections fails. And 2 I have duplicate entries for Ubuntu (Linux Mint) as well. Previously my NVMe m.2 looked like this partition wise: Windows Boot Manger | Windows Partitions | Linux /boot/efi | Linux OS My Solution to 'remove' it was to go into gparted, delete both Windows Partitions, and then move Linux /boot/efi and resize the main Linux OS part to take up the Full disk. It worked but it still thinks Windows is installed. I had a suspicion it was because the space was not written over so despite not being a partition. So I did a silly test and made a few files with dd that completely filled up my main Linux Partition (to theoretically write over the previous sectors where the Ubuntu boot partition was located. No change. I'm also tempted to back up the boot partition, dd over it multiple times with /dev/random and then put it back, since that was where the previous Windows Boot Manager was located. Or is this just some weird thing where I'm better off backing up files and restoring with a fully wiped SSD?
It’s likely you should clear and reset the storage device. Instead of manual steps, consider letting the system pick the correct Linux installation automatically via Grub on startup.
Disconnect the SSD from the board, restart, power off, then reconnect it. The duplicates will disappear (if there aren’t two entries in the BCD). For faulty ones, search online for “how to mount the efi partition in windows” to remove non-booting folders. You may need to unplug, power cycle, and reconnect again.
From a terminal in a Linux installation, this command displays your EFI entries. This action removes an EFI boot entry. Using sudo efibootmgr -b bootnum_here -B will delete a specific entry. For instance, to remove a HDD entry, you can run the same command with the appropriate boot number. Typically, the EFI data is stored in the EUFI Boot Manager on your motherboard, and a CMOS reset clears it. If needed, efibootmgr can also be used for this purpose.
This would correspond to a million StackOverflow answers. It’s great to discover new Linux tools. Removing those two was straightforward—leaving only the two Ubuntu ones. The system indicates it started from version 0005, so deleting the other might be optional. At least I managed to eliminate those non-existent Windows entries.