"invalid EFI file path" After shrinking partition

NexlowN

6/28/24, 8:19 AM

I've had this problem for a few days now and I can't seem to find a solution that works among all the answers online, plus they all date from around 2012.

So, I have a 1Tb hard disk where I allocated about 70 giga for ubuntu and the rest is used by windows BUT it is not where windows is installed. Windows is installed on my 120 Go SSD. I decided to make a bit more room for ubuntu and tried to shrink the partition to the left of it which is a big 700 Go chunk of my HDD. I did it with MiniTool Partition Wizard. I told me that I had to reboot in order to carry out the modifications so I did. But since then when my PC boots up and I try to boot into windows it says

error: can't find command 'parttool' 
error: can't find command 'drivemap'
error: invalid EFI file path

I tried many times to add an entry to grub manually (using "menuentry {...}" in /etc/grub.d/40_custom) but that always gave me the same error.

I then tried with boot-repair (on a boot drive) and it still doesn't work but at least the error with the missing command 'parttool' disappeared now. Boot-repair would tell me that errors are fixed and I just had to reboot and run sudo update-grub and it would add the windows boot entry but it doesn't work.I only have now the ubuntu entry and a windows entry if I add one manually (but doesn't work)

Let me know if you need more info. Thanks for any help!

Update

Here's the summary from boot-repair : https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/7VS6qTV5hf/

It might be worth mentioning that I also have a NVMe drive that I installed about a week ago to which I assigned a letter in Windows but there's no OS installed on it, just a few files.

0 + 5

partitioning

boot

grub2

dual-boot

uefi

oldfred

6/28/24, 2:03 PM

As Boot-Repair says, post a link to the summary report it creates in your question above. Then we can see details of your install. 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

NexlowN

6/28/24, 3:22 PM

@oldfred thanks for you answer, I updated the question to add the pastebin.

oldfred

6/28/24, 6:26 PM

You have mixed UEFI & BIOS on an UEFI system. Your drives are all MBR(msdos), not gpt. Microsoft has required vendors to install in UEFI/gpt mode since 2012 and I think Windows 11 is UEFI/gpt only. Ubuntu lets you install in UEFI mode to MBR drives and really should not. ESP requires boot flag & Windows has to have boot flag on its boot partition. You can only have one boot flag per drive. If NVMe drive is new, I would backup data and convert to gpt now with an ESP. Conversion from MBR to gpt totally erases a drive so good backups required. Looks like sdb1 has Windows boot files.

NexlowN

6/30/24, 6:18 PM

@oldfred right but am I supposed to do then ? Also, I don't understand how by just changing the size of a partition it broke everything. It was working perfectly fine before then. I was thinking that I may have overwritten something by accident but I don't understand how shrinking the size of an already existing partition can do that

oldfred

6/30/24, 7:01 PM

Shrinking should not have changed boot unless you also deleted a partition. But you could have had a Windows update which may also have updated UEFI and reset system to defaults. I would prefer you had all UEFI (or at least all BIOS) boot. But with multiple drives you can boot thru UEFI menu. Most systems now work that way without having to go into UEFI and change default boot mode setting to boot system in different mode.

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