GRUB tries to boot Microsoft Reserved Partition after moving EFI partition

Ömer Melih Aksoy

2/2/24, 9:48 AM

Recently Ubuntu Studio gave me the warning that root filesystem has low disk space. So I shrank the major C: partition of Windows and moved all partitions to the left so that I can extend the size of my root partition.

I also moved the /boot/efi partition as well along doing this. I came to know that I have 2 EFI partitions (nvme0n1p1 and nvme0n1p6). One comes first which I had not moved at all (there was Windows 10 upgraded to Windows 11 more than a year ago) and one was added while I first installed Ubuntu Studio on my computer for 1-2 months at most.

When I try to boot it asks me a password for the 16 MB Microsoft Reserved Partition which is 16 MB and is nvme0n1p3 and it is somehow encrypted.

The EFI partition is at nvme0n1p6 has 'boot' label, while the root partition is at nvme0n1p8. Also the Home partition is nvme0n1p9.

After this I tried reinstalling Ubuntu Studio after backing up root, WFI and home partitions, but for no avail I still get the screen that asks me to enter the password for nvme0n1p3_crypt and telling me Volume group "vgubuntu" not found.

I tried reinstalling GRUB from a Live USB disk too, but using the chroot method did not work.

I also tried grub-repair method, but still asking the key for 16 MB partition for whatever reason.

I tried tidying up partitions and restoring from the backup partition images. I think I need to configure grub to directly run nvme0n1p8 to start the operating system and skip the other partitions.

I can't unlock the nvme0n1p3 Microsoft Reserved Partition as I don't know the password for it. I didn't set that. I suppose Windows needs it and I don't want to mess anymore.

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oldfred

2/2/24, 7:17 PM

The Microsoft reserved is unformatted, not encrypted. It has nothing to mount and is just scratch space for Windows. Most systems only work with one ESP - efi system partition per device or drive. The ESP must have esp,boot flags if using gparted and must be FAT32 formatted. Please copy & paste the pastebin link to the BootInfo summary report ( do not post report), do not run the auto fix till reviewed. Use often updated ppa version over somewhat older ISO with your USB installer or any working install. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Ömer Melih Aksoy

2/3/24, 9:44 AM

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/2hGPhyZqZ8/

Ömer Melih Aksoy

2/3/24, 9:45 AM

In my device it sees MRP as a luks filesystem.

Ömer Melih Aksoy

2/3/24, 9:49 AM

I somehow manually installed archlinux and it booted correctly. I wanted to experiment if I install Grub along with a fresh OS other than Ubuntu... I'll have to format it again for now I Just need to get into my old home directory [I have the partiton backup image] and recover some recent notes and articles I created while using Ubuntu.

oldfred

2/3/24, 2:23 PM

Did you want LVM and did you also choose encryption? If encrypted, best to backup the data, not the encrypted partition. You show two Ubuntu UEFI boot entries one from 6 and one from 1 (partition numbers). It looks like you converted the MSR, p3, Windows requires that as unformatted space and flagged as Microsoft Reserved. And as LUKS too small to be useful for anything else. Best to remove Ubuntu entry using p6 and delete p6.

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EN: GRUB tries to boot Microsoft Reserved Partition after moving EFI partition

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