Arch Linux

antihumane

Member

Registered: 2023-07-03

Posts: 2

Restoring an accidently deleted EFI system partition

When i was installing(dual booting) arch i accidently erased the efi partition using the command
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdb1 and successfully installed arch, leaving windows in a unusable state and after that i followed this(https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows#Restoring_an_accidentally_deleted_EFI_system_partition) guide
and after running the command
bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI
it says Failure when attempting to copy boot files
Then i tried searching how to resolve that and found that i needed to make the EFI partition active and i tried to make that partition active
But it says
Active command can only be used on fixed MBR disks
Then again i went on searching for it and found that i needed to boot in legacy BIOS which i think i should do after consulting with someone with far more expertise so here i am posting my first topic.

antihumane

Member

Registered: 2023-07-03

Posts: 2

Re: Restoring an accidently deleted EFI system partition

Also someone on a unofficial arch group on telegram suggested me to reinstall windows
Will that be necessary or can i somehow fix this without doing that?

Last edited by antihumane (2023-07-03 10:03:45)

jl2

Member

From: 47° 18' N 8° 34' E

Registered: 2022-06-01

Posts: 1,389

Re: Restoring an accidently deleted EFI system partition

welcome to the boards!

*fingers very crossed*
try if my files work (it probably won't): https://drive.proton.me/urls/PXC4F57VQG#n5zcV18WPAge
Probably Microsoft has somehow made something to prevent exactly this.
And it will most certainly not work with bitlocker.

Recovering the drive won't work since you've overwritten most of it.
If your lucky you might still have your windows keys.

EDIT: if it doesn't work, try repairing it with the installation media
btw prefer ewallers post

Last edited by jl2 (2023-07-04 09:25:43)

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,648

Re: Restoring an accidently deleted EFI system partition

Unfortunately, I think you are going to need to fix things from the Windows side.  Searching 'windows rebuild efi partition' brought up several promising articles, including:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-u … ur-dell-pc

No guarantees.  Sadly, each operating system has to add its own magic to the EFI partition.  And Windows developers seems unable to install to anything but a clean slate.

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