EDIT: So after all that, I was able to reinstall windows and download Macrium reflect + my backup. First time I tried to recover it, it failed for some reason, but the second time around I was able to restore it successfully. I’m now back where I started, thank you everyone!

I’m not done with Linux yet, but I think I’m going to try and run it in a good VM for the time being. When I’m done with classes, or when I get a separate device, I will give it another go.

Post 1: https://lemmy.ca/post/3709382

Post 2: https://lemmy.ca/post/3863438

Yesterday I could at least change the order in the BIOS to boot windows. Now I can’t even do that.

I think when reinstalling, I must have overwritten something (the EFI?). I saw some other people that had a very similar experience, and the advice was to reinstall Windows. I’m currently downloading Windows installation media on another computer and I’m going to try and reinstall windows now.

This just keeps getting worse and worse, and thank you for the help while I struggle through this.

If anyone has other tips, I’d appreciate it :)

  • I_like_cats@lemmy.one
    0·
    1 year ago

    This happens, because the stupid windows bootloader installs itself onto the same partition as the fedora bootloader instead of making it’s own. So when you reinstall fedora, the windows bootloader is deleted. Look up how to reinstall windows bootloader

    • Jajcus@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      On EFI systems all bootloaders are supposed to reside on a single partition. EFI does not support multiple ‘EFI system partitions’, so operating systems have to share a single one. And this is usually not a problem if it is the one Windows choose. The problem most often is broken EFI firmware which fails to correctly handle adding and removing boot entries. Or Windows, which fails to boot if anything changes (disk order and such), even though everything is still available.

      • Nayviler@lemmy.ca
        0·
        1 year ago

        This is technically only true if you have a single disk. The EFI spec allows for a single EFI partition per disk, so you can definitely have multiple in a system. I know this, because my setup has multiple EFI partitions. Windows doesn’t like it, and it will try it’s hardest to share a single one with Linux, but if it’s on its own disk, you can set it up with its own EFI partition using the command prompt.

  • Name@programming.dev
    0·
    1 year ago

    Jesus, stop. You probably only removed the boot entry, happened to me before. Download Windows ISO, put it on a pendrive, boot into it and navigate to the terminal. Then look up a guide on how to restore the boot entry, should be just couple of simple commands and you’re done.

    If you are too lazy, at least boot into Linux, mount the Windows drive and back up your stuff.

    • Otter@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you! This is completely on me for just rushing ahead and accepting the loss, but I’ll save this for if I run into this again. The only option on the recovery screen I didn’t try was the terminal.

      https://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/

      I did find this guide, is this looking close to what you went through?

      Thankfully I did backup my stuff before starting the process so that’s what I was planning on doing. Just moving the backup files onto my computer now