ls -lr /boot/efi
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 System Volume Information
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 $RECYCLE.BIN
As I said in another response, I must have deleted the Windows boot partition when I removed TW partitions via Gparted
I have a 4 G Windows install usb. I will have to make a new Ventoy on a bigger usb to accommodate that. In the meantime, I used the Windows install usb to get to a repair option. It comes back that it couldnât do a repair. There was no fix-boot option listed.
Hmmm⌠I used that usb to install Windows. Why didnât it create a boot partition? There was room.
That is not what I requested. Is it that hard to simply copy and paste the command?
Itâs hard for me to figure out what you actually did. You may start from the very beginning: How to Install Windows 10 for Free .
You need a big enough stick (8 GB minimum):
Disk /dev/sdb: 29.82 GiB, 32023511040 bytes, 62545920 sectors
Disk model: Ultra Line
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x9ab30946
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 8192 62543871 62535680 29.8G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 62543872 62545919 2048 1M e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
erlangen:~ # lsblk -f /dev/sdb1
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sdb1 ntfs Windows USB 1083B99A47FA0414 24G 19% /media/Windows USB
erlangen:~ #
Your first sentence: installed Win âwhenâ - the original install, or the recent attempt?
Second: probably detected a uefi boot partition, but didnât verify it, so didnât create afresh.
It is hard when youâr old and stupid. This looks like it worked.
ls -lR /boot/efi
/boot/efi:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 $RECYCLE.BIN
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 System Volume Information
/boot/efi/$RECYCLE.BIN:
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 129 Jun 28 10:52 desktop.ini
/boot/efi/EFI:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 opensuse
/boot/efi/EFI/boot:
total 1832
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 934024 Jun 30 17:17 bootx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 86208 Jun 30 17:17 fallback.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 846096 Jun 30 17:17 MokManager.efi
/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse:
total 3432
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58 Jun 30 17:17 boot.csv
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 155 Jun 30 17:17 grub.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1398640 Jun 30 17:17 grub.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 319488 Jun 30 17:17 grubx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 846096 Jun 30 17:17 MokManager.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 934024 Jun 30 17:17 shim.efi
/boot/efi/System Volume Information:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 76 Jun 28 10:52 IndexerVolumeGuid
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12 Jun 28 10:53 WPSettings.dat
I have a 24GB usb drive with an education version of Windows 10. The link you provided had one surprise for me. In the past, I thought Windows had to be installed first and opensuse would work around it. The link says the opposite. Should I re-install Windows with TW in place? Clear all partitions and start from the beginning? Clear the Windows partition only and hope a new install will take 2 GB of the 97 GB to make a boot partition?
Thanks for all your help and advice.
hmmm⌠didnât occur that there might be a uefi issue. This is for the recent attempt at install. Waiting for advice on new install .
Might be nice to have a Flatpak package of Windows 
Which prompts me to reply âŚ
Why not install your Win 10 to a virtual machine ?? If you only use it occasionally, this might be the best option ⌠and of the least hassle.
We already have two desktops and two laptops that are 100% dedicated to TW.
And one lone laptop (yea, a 3rd) that is dedicated to Win10 ⌠otherwise, Iâd install Win10 as a VM on one of the dedicated desktops.
1-One ESP, short for EFI System Partition, is required per UEFI PC in which UEFI booting is utilized. It can be used, and usually should be used, by all installed operating systems. Calling the ESP a âboot partitionâ creates confusion. A âboot partitionâ is usually small, contains OS files such as kernel and initrd, and gets mounted to /boot/, while an ESP gets mounted to /boot/efi/. IOW, an ESP and a âboot partitionâ serve different functions.
2-2GB for an ESP partition would be a monumental waste. 1/4 of that for an ESP partition is nearly always a considerable waste. Windows defaults to a 100MB ESP. However, if the disk has 4k native sectors, 260MB is the minimum.
# df -h | grep efi
/dev/nvme0n1p1 320M 12M 308M 4% /boot/efi # â 12 installed operating systems on this PC
# du -s /boot/efi/EFI/opensusetw
144 /boot/efi/EFI/opensusetw # blocks aka clusters used by the file
# dosfsck -v -n /dev/nvme0n1p1 | grep -E 'per cluster|data cluster'
4096 bytes per cluster
81756 data clusters (334872576 bytes)
# echo "144*4096" | bc
589824 # bytes used by the file
# echo "4096/334872576" | bc -l
.00001223151817603600 # X100 is the percentage of available space consumed
.0012% of my ESP is used by the TW Grub loader that lives there. Usage grows if encryption is employed, but not enough to demand more than a minuscule fraction of 2GB.
All that said, 512MB is commonly employed for an ESP because it is the minimum size for a FAT partition for which the FAT type automatically applied by typical FAT formatters is 32 rather than 16, and 32 is the preferred type for an ESP. Windows installers make its 100MB ESP FAT32, not FAT16. In TWâs installer to create a new FAT32 for a smaller than 512MB ESP it is required to check a box to specify 32 be applied instead of 16.
Iâve never been brave enough or smart enough to use a virtual machine. I re-installed Windows on my lone hard drive. I will say more in response to other posts in this thread,
You can first install Windows and then add Tumbleweed. But you can also install Tumbleweed first. It doesnât matter if you know what you are doing.
For my first Windows install in the current millennium I tried the easy way and gave a detailed description of the steps performed.
As you are prone to unforced errors you may try again and again until your procedures work reliably.
I re-installed Windows. Some background: for decades I have been involved in public education. In relation to one of my positions, I was given a usb drive with Windows on it to update an old laptop (no TW on that one.) This is the usb I have been using to update/re-install that I discussed in this thread. When I used it to install, I have a choice of at least 6 Versions of Windows 10. I always picked the first one: Windows 10 Home. While following the tips and instructions that you all have given me, I noticed a folder labeled Win 10 EDU or something similar. One of my choices for Windows install was the education version.tt
That made sense since the usb was from an educational institution for an educational laptop. So, on the last re-install, I chose the Education version. This version gave me the partitioning option that did not appear before. If I recall correctly, it offered a 0.5MB boot partition! I accepted it and let the install finish.
It has given me mixed results. Now, an unattended reboot goes directly to the grub menu without all the steps I described earlier. That is a big plus. However, the grub menu still does not have a Windows option. I went through the various steps given to me here but nothing changes. I still have to go through several menus to get Windows to boot. This is better than it was since TW is what I will use 95% of the time. I am reposting the commands requested prior, now that I have made this change.
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 298.09 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Disk model: Hitachi HTS72323
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x83c3e4b9
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 205008895 205006848 97.8G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 205008896 206057471 1048576 512M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sda3 206057472 620947455 414889984 197.8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 620947456 625142447 4194992 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
grep 'menuentry ' /boot/grub2/grub.cfg |cut -d \' -f2
menuentry "Help on bootable snapshot #$snapshot_num" {
openSUSE Tumbleweed
openSUSE Tumbleweed, with Linux 6.3.9-1-default
openSUSE Tumbleweed, with Linux 6.3.9-1-default (recovery mode)
efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 10 seconds
BootOrder: 0006,0000,0001,0002
Boot0000* Optical Disk Drive BBS(CDROM,ďż˝,0x0)0000000000001f00000002000000010100000000030000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000011000000000000000200
Boot0001* Notebook Hard Drive BBS(HD,ďż˝,0x0)0100000000001f00000002000000010100000000020000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000100
Boot0002* Notebook Ethernet BBS(128,ďż˝,0x0)02004500000000000000000000000200af0000cf80000000240c00cfbb0100cf000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001500
Boot0003* Notebook Ethernet BBS(128,ďż˝,0x0)03004500000000000000000000000200af0000cf80000000240c00cfbb0100cf000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001500
Boot0004* Notebook Ethernet BBS(128,ďż˝,0x0)04004500000000000000000000000200af0000cf80000000240c00cfbb0100cf000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001500
Boot0005* opensuse HD(2,MBR,0x83c3e4b9,0xc383000,0x100000)/File(\EFI\opensuse\grubx64.efi)
Boot0006* opensuse-secureboot HD(2,MBR,0x83c3e4b9,0xc383000,0x100000)/File(\EFI\opensuse\shim.efi
ls -lR /boot/efi
/boot/efi:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 $RECYCLE.BIN
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:52 System Volume Information
/boot/efi/$RECYCLE.BIN:
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 129 Jun 28 10:52 desktop.ini
/boot/efi/EFI:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 28 10:48 opensuse
/boot/efi/EFI/boot:
total 1832
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 934024 Jun 30 17:17 bootx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 86208 Jun 30 17:17 fallback.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 846096 Jun 30 17:17 MokManager.efi
/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse:
total 3432
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58 Jun 30 17:17 boot.csv
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 155 Jun 30 17:17 grub.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1398640 Jun 30 17:17 grub.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 319488 Jul 1 17:08 grubx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 846096 Jun 30 17:17 MokManager.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 934024 Jun 30 17:17 shim.efi
/boot/efi/System Volume Information:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 76 Jun 28 10:52 IndexerVolumeGuid
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12 Jun 28 10:53 WPSettings.dat
f -h | grep efi
/dev/sda2 511M 5.2M 506M 2% /boot/efi
/dev/sda3 198G 8.6G 188G 5% /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
I think thatâs the lot of them. I am grateful to each of you that are trying to help me .
There is no Windows bootloader and the output of efibootmgr confirms it. If your Windows still boots from the BIOS menu, it means Windows is installed in legacy BIOS mode. To have it in grub menu you need to switch openSUSE to legacy BIOS boot too (or just reinstall making sure you booted installer in the correct mode).
That was my first guess, that you accidentally deleted the Win partition.
You need to choose existing partition - manually select partitions. Do not choose autoselect. That will damge your system in the most cases.
If you run dual boot, my recommendation is, do the partitioning with gparted first, because you have to reinstall windows. Create a 2GB EFI partition at first, then a minimum 80GB win partition (FAT), and the rest as you like.
It is recommended to separate /home the user directory from the / root system directory. so you that means you should have at least 4 separate partition.
Then go and use windows install. Windows will most likely add another 100-200MB EFI partition.
Choose format to NTFS for the FAT partition and donât touch the others.
After the install is finished, you can do one day of updates and 100 restarts with Windows, or straight go and install TW on the two partitions, select manual partition, existing partitions(!). Choose EFI drive for /EFI/boot , your / root partiton (at least 40GB) and your /home partition.
That should take 20minutes and you should have your system running.
Why? Windows only uses a tiny fraction of its own 100MB default ESP, and a basic TW installation needs an even smaller fraction. One would probably need 6 encrypted installations fighting for boot control to use as much as half of 100MB.
I have one PC with 12 distros installed and 320MB ESP with two versions of memtest86 on it. That ESP currently has 96% freespace.
I am actually using 4GB with multi Boot. I make it bigger for any possible use case.
Thanks to all that helped me here. I re-tried a couple of times and got this laptop working the way it should. I deleted the linux partitions, left the Windows partition alone, and also didnât touch a 500 MB partition that while not clearly labeled, I assumed was a Windows boot partition. That left unallocated space for TW.
I next installed TW and accepted the partitioning suggestions. As recommended, I set a separate partition for /home. Booting Windows gave me problems saying there were problems with the Windows install. I rebooted it several times using the installer repair tools, which did nothing. But, after these several re-boots, Window boots and runs normally. So, this laptop is running as desired. An unattended boot brings me to a grub menu. From the grub menu, I can boot TW or Windows 10 without problems or the need for intervention! So, thanks again.
However, all is not as expected. You have asked for the output of several commands. If I missed any, I will gladly post any that interests you
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 298.09 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Disk model: Hitachi HTS72323
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x83c3e4b9
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 205008895 205006848 97.8G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 205008896 206057471 1048576 512M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 206057472 365326335 159268864 75.9G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 365326336 625142447 259816112 123.9G f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 365328384 620945407 255617024 121.9G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 620947456 625142447 4194992 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
I donât understand what is going on with sda4 and sda5. fdisk tells me it is a 298 G disk and the partitions exceed that amount. I see that sda5 and sda6 add up to the size of sda4. I just donât understand how that works.
Finally, I carefully did a copy and paste on the following commands.
localhost:/ # efibootmgr
If 'efibootmgr' is not a typo you can use command-not-found to lookup the package that contains it, like this:
cnf efibootmgr
localhost:/ # ls -lR /boot/efi
ls: cannot access '/boot/efi': No such file or directory
localhost:/ # df -h | grep efi
/dev/sda3 76G 6.0G 69G 9% /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
Donât know what difference it makes, but yast bootloader shows I am using grub not grub2. Iâm thinking âif it ainât broke it , donât fix it.â Unless you suggest otherwise, I will leave it alone.
The DOS partition table can only offer 4 entries.
If more are wanted, designate 1 of the 4 as an extended partition (your sda4, W95 Extâd (LBA)).
Then it can itself be divided into as many logical partitions as wanted.
Those subsequent logical partitions are numbered beginning with -5-. (so your sda5 and sda6 added up equal sda4, the extended).
Because of your âsnipâ that is NOT visible. Why do you not post all? It isnât that much more.
Always post complete: the prompt/command line, all output, the next prompt line. Is this the first time you read this on the forums here?