I'm trying to dual-boot Windows 10 with Fedora and Ubuntu on an Acer laptop using UEFI. The system has a 1 TB HDD and a 128 GB NVMe SSD. Fedora 44 installed but froze at its boot screen, so I later installed Ubuntu using manual partitioning. The layout now appears to include a Windows NTFS partition, a roughly 629 MB VFAT partition, an ext4 root partition, and a separate roughly 1.13 GB FAT32 partition mounted at /boot/efi.
The Ubuntu installation completed, and the firmware boot menu shows entries for Ubuntu, Fedora, and Windows Boot Manager. However, selecting Ubuntu leads to Windows Recovery instead of GRUB or Ubuntu. Windows Boot Manager also sometimes enters recovery. I previously noticed that Windows could not find an EFI/fedora directory when I mounted an EFI partition, so I'm concerned that there may be multiple EFI System Partitions or that the boot entries point to the wrong files.
What is the safest way to determine which EFI partition each operating system is using and repair the bootloader without deleting my Windows partition? Ideally, I'd like a working boot menu with Windows, Ubuntu, and Fedora.
3 Answers
The firmware entries can be inspected and changed from Linux with efibootmgr, but it’s important to first identify the actual EFI System Partition and confirm which boot files are present. Commands such as lsblk -f and efibootmgr -v can show the partition layout and the paths used by each firmware entry. If there are multiple EFI partitions, the installers may have placed their files on different ones, which can produce misleading boot entries. Avoid deleting or formatting anything until the partitions and boot paths are clearly identified.
Windows should normally be installed first, followed by Linux, and both Linux installers should use the existing Windows EFI System Partition rather than creating or selecting an unrelated one. Check the partition sizes and filesystem types from a live Linux environment, then reinstall or repair GRUB while explicitly mounting the correct EFI partition at /boot/efi. Afterward, update GRUB so it detects the Windows installation. Keep Secure Boot settings consistent while troubleshooting, since changing them can affect whether Fedora or Ubuntu starts.
A boot manager such as GRUB2Win or rEFInd can sometimes provide a simpler menu when the firmware contains several stale entries, but it should be used only after the EFI layout is understood. First back up important Windows data and use Windows recovery tools if its boot files are damaged. Then repair the Linux bootloader and remove only confirmed-obsolete firmware entries; randomly changing or deleting EFI entries can make the situation worse.
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