Trying to Restore Windows Boot after Dual Booting

[mlloyd22]

Oldfred, Tea For One, and Yaneck (welcome to this thread and THANK YOU for helping me):

I am taking you advice and am backing up all of my data. I will continue in the repair effort first by doing an updated Boot-Repair summary once all of my data is backed up. Once again thank you all for your help.

[mlloyd22]

All,

A week later I've backed up all of my data. Sorry for the delay, it took a while to get that much data on the cloud. The PC I am using was custom built by a friend. I reached out to him and he informed me that he had the windows os/boot stuff on the Samsung 960EVO SSD. I found that to be a helpful bit of info on this quest to get my PC back running windows. Here is an updated boot repair summary: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/KFpwMVwhkN/

Hopefully this sheds some light. What I am beginning to suspect is that either due to my error, or the unreliable nature of the tool I used, the Windows OS portion was over written on the samsung or corrupted. I think what I am going to have to do is reinstall windows using a usb flashed with a windows 10 iso. But I could be wrong, that's where you guys come in. Let me know if you think that's the course of action I should take. Again, thank you all so much for your continued support!

[mlloyd22]

Yancek,

To answer your last question, yes. This is a custom PC built by a friend that had both the seagate SSHD and the samsung SSD in the machine when I got it, with the windows os being installed on the samsung SSD.

[oldfred]

Your UEFI entries for Windows are not UEFI entries, but look like those of disconnected drives.
Re-run command from post #2
But then do not try to use Supergrub, but directly boot from UEFI boot menu, often f12, but varies my vendor. Same key you use to choose to boot external flash drive.

See line 123 and entries 0,1 & 5
They look like this:
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager VenHw

But you want an entry like this, but with your entry number & your GUID;
Boot0007* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,c3b854b4-f01c-485b-83b8-915bbbe8750c,0x800,0x64000)/File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS

[mlloyd22]

Oldfred,

I re ran the command in post #2. It then outputted that my boot options were as follows:

Boot0000: Windows boot manager
Boot0001: Windows boot manager
Boot0002: Hard Drive
Boot0005: Windows boot manager
Boot0006: UEFI: USB Partition 1
Boot0007: UEFI: USB Partition 2
Boot0003: Windows boot manager

(not sure where option 4 is at or why they're out of order)

I then restarted my machine and pressed f12 to enter my bios boot options. The boot options either had names or were blank boxes in the boot select menu, and yielded the result as followed by "->"
Option 0: Blank -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.
Option 1: Blank -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.
Option 2: Blank -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.
Option 3: Samsung 960EVO SSD -> Opens Grub
Option 4: USB -> Opens Grub
Option 5: P4: ST2000DX002-2DV164 -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.
Option 6: UEFI: Partition 1 -> Opens Grub
Option 7: UEFI: Partition 2 -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.
Option 8: Blank -> does nothing, either a black screen or cuts to a black screen then back to the bios boot menu.

Like I may have mentioned in previous posts, I had done this dual boot on a partition with no issues. When it worked without issue, in order to get back to windows I would select an option in the bios menu titled something along the lines of "Windows Boot loader." I can't remember what it was named exactly, but it did have "Windows" in the name.

[oldfred]

Do not post plain UEFI output. use this so details can be seen.
sudo efibootmgr -v

I expected all the Windows entries with VenHW would be invalid.
You can use efibootmgr to delete them. Double check you use right number for XXXX with above command.
man efibootmgr
sudo efibootmgr -b XXXX -B

[mlloyd22]

Oldfred,

I deleted all of the blank VenHW options except for one. The one I left was unique, as you'll see it lists out additional details after the parentheses, the others did not.

Here is the output to "sudo efibootmgr -v"

BootCurrent: 0006
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0006,0007,0000
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager    VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...a................
Boot0002* Hard Drive    BBS(HD,,0x0)..GO..NO..........S.a.m.s.u.n.g. .S.S.D. .9.6.0. .E.V.O. .2.5.0.G.B....................A...........................%8Rq..h.....H..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.S.a.m.s.u.n.g. .S.S.D. .9.6.0. .E.V.O. .2.5.0.G.B........BO..NOU.......9. .U.S.B....................A................................Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.0.4.0.1.0.b.4.9.e.0.d.2.f.3.4.f.9.7.a.e.e.9.f.3.b.2.8.b.5.4.9.6.2.6.9.4.4.c.5.b.9.3.d.d.9.1.5.0.e.c.b.e.5.9.b.c.4.b.9.5.b.5.9.8.1.e.d.e.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.a.2.b.c.b.7.3.f.0.0.9.5.1.0.1.8.8.1.5.5.8.1.0.7.c.a.2.e.9.5.d.4........BO..NO........o.S.T.2.0.0.0.D.X.0.0.2.-.2.D.V.1.6.4....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . . . . . . . . . .4.Z.A.Z.8.M.L.D........BO
Boot0006* UEFI:  USB, Partition 1    PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(7,0)/USB(0,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x3dbe31d8,0x1800,0x64801)..BO
Boot0007* UEFI:  USB, Partition 2    PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(7,0)/USB(0,0)/HD(2,MBR,0x3dbe31d8,0x66800,0x84801)..BO

[oldfred]

If adding the Windows boot entry using efibootmgr does not create a valid boot, then you have to use Windows repair/recovery disk to make repairs.
You may be able to use a Windows install ISO, but boot into a repair or command line.

Not sure what Windows repairs now work or work best. I ended up having to use Dell's full recovery which totally erased drive and made it just like the day I purchased it. None of the Windows repairs or may own recovery/repair disk would work.
I think when Dell replaced motherboard, they did not restore the original Windows Product Key, so Windows would not fix it.

[mlloyd22]

Oldfred,

I've basically re read and actually understood this thread now that I know Windows was on my samsung ssd, and agree with your conclusion. Your very first suggestion should have worked. Since it doesn't it sounds like you're right, I've got a Windows ISO on a flashdrive and I can reinstall windows. The only issue is I don't want lose all the data on that drive like you've said (I've confirmed that this would in fact happen if I don't back up the data elsewhere on windows forums). Today I was finally able to track down all of my data located on partition 4 of my SSD on a Try Ubuntu boot. It auto mounts to /cdrom. Now that I know where that data is, I am trying to back it up and am not having success. I am trying to use deja dup to upload this data to google drive (I can't just drag the cdrom file into google drive or its contents) but am getting the error:

BackendException: PyDrive bacend requires PyDrive and Google API client installation. Please read the manpage for setup

Is there another way I can back up my data on partition 4 of my SSD? I am having trouble installing PyDrive...

Thanks for the continued support.

[oldfred]

I only use Windows for a few things, primarily Taxes.
I put a small FAT32 partition on Windows drive & copy data with a .bat file like I used to do with XP.
Multiple commands like this.
xcopy C:\"Users\xxx\Documents\yyyy" D:\"yyyy" /d /s /y
I thought this would let my reinstall Windows and keep "d:" drive partition.
I think it was only the full Dell restore that wiped drive including d: & my Kubuntu install.

But I then mounted my Linux desktop & used rsync to copy. I had an ubuntu install on Windows system and used NFS to connect systems.
I also am back to sneakernet after Dell erased drive and now use full install on SSD external drive to copy data to. I use it to boot Kubuntu on laptop and when in desktop as data drive or part of backups.

I really like external SSD as it seems almost as fast as internal SSD. Debating if I now want full Kubuntu install on laptop as Kubuntu SSD works so well.

Do not remember if Windows fast startup also locked my FAT32 d: or not, but you can mount read only even if fast startup hibernation flag is on.

I do not use any cloud storage. I prefer multiple SSD, flash drives, DVDs or other local storage.