Reinstall Fedora 44 GRUB in a dual-boot setup with Windows 11

reinstall_fedora44_grub_in_a_dual_boot_setup_with_windows11.md

Reinstall Fedora 44 GRUB in a dual-boot setup with Windows 11

Windows 11 updates sometimes hide or wipe the GRUB menu and your system boots directly into Windows. In this case, you can restore GRUB using a Fedora 44 Live USB.

1. Create a Live USB: Use a tool like Rufus (if using Windows) or Fedora Media Writer (which is pre-installed in Fedora if you have it on some other machine) to flash Fedora 44 onto a USB drive.

2. Boot from the USB: Restart your computer and press your manufacturer's Boot Menu Key (usually F12, F11, F10, or Esc) to select and boot from the USB in UEFI mode.

3. Open the Terminal: Once inside the Live environment, open the terminal.

4. Identify your Linux Root Partition: Type sudo fdisk -l to find the partition where Linux is installed (it will likely look something like /dev/sda2 or /dev/nvme0n1p2).

   Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
   /dev/sda1       2048   1230847   1228800   600M EFI System
   /dev/sda2    1230848   1263615     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
   /dev/sda3    1263616 314236927 312973312 149.2G Microsoft basic data
   /dev/sda4  314236928 315834367   1597440   780M Windows recovery environment
   /dev/sda5  315834368 320028671   4194304     2G Linux filesystem
   /dev/sda6  320028672 500117503 180088832  85.9G Linux filesystem

   In my case, /dev/sda1 600MB is my EFI System partition (this is where the bootloader files live), /dev/sda5 2GB is my /boot partition and /dev/sda6 85.9GB is my, btrfs type, root (/) partition where Fedora is installed.

Caution

Make sure to identify your partitions and use them correctly in the next step.

5. Mount the Btrfs Subvolumes & EFI:

   # Mount the Fedora root subvolume
   sudo mount -o subvol=root /dev/sda6 /mnt
   
   # Mount your separate boot partition
   sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/boot
   
   # Mount your EFI partition
   sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
   
   # Bind critical virtual file systems
   for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
   
   # Bind EFI variables so Fedora can fix your motherboard's boot list
   sudo mount -o bind /sys/firmware/efi/efivars /mnt/sys/firmware/efi/efivars

6. Chroot into your Fedora System: Switch your terminal's operational scope into your installed system.

   sudo chroot /mnt

7. Wipe the Broken Boot Files and Reinstall: Wiping the broken GRUB and shim config files will trigger Fedora to cleanly recreate them upon package reinstallation.

   # Remove corrupted configurations (Fedora automatically recreates these)
   rm -f /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
   rm -f /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
   
   # Reinstall the correct boot loader packages
   dnf reinstall grub2-efi grub2-common shim

Caution

Fedora has a strict rule for UEFI systems: Never use the grub-install command. It breaks Fedora's shim signed boot files. Instead, we must let Fedora’s package manager (dnf) rebuild the EFI files correctly.

8. Re-generate the GRUB Config Menu: Create a clean, updated boot list that probes for both Fedora 44 and Windows 11.

   grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

9. Clean Exit and Reboot: Exit the chroot safely, flush the changes to the disk, and restart your PC.

   exit
   sync
   sudo reboot

Note

Use systemctl reboot -i if you get an error running sudo reboot command.

The GRUB menu should now reappear.