Re: major booting issues for a totally blind user trying to boot debian 12.6 and windows 10 pro 64 bits on different drives with uefi booting

[Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>]

On 25/10/2024 at 22:03, nick@nickgawronski.com wrote:
> Hi, Here is the parted print command for /dev/nvme0n1 the linux drive
> Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
> Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 2000GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: gpt
> Disk Flags:
>
> Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
>   1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32              boot, esp
>   2      538MB   1050MB  512MB   ext2
>   3      1050MB  2000GB  1999GB
>
> Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
> Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 2000GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: gpt
> Disk Flags:
>
> Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name Flags
>   1      1049kB  17.8MB  16.8MB  ext4         Microsoft reserved partition msftres
>   2      17.8MB  1999GB  1999GB  ntfs         Nick Gawronski's system 76 1 msftdata
>   3      1999GB  2000GB  724MB   ntfs hidden, diag
>   4      2000GB  2000GB  557MB   ntfs         Unnamed hidden, diag
>   It looks like somehow the esp partition got it's type changed to the 
> ext4 partition type

No, partition 1 is too small for a ESP. As indicated by the name and 
flag, it is a MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition). It is not supposed to 
have any filesystem.

My only guess is that for some reason Windows' ESP was on the other 
drive and was deleted when you installed Debian on the entire drive. You 
need to reinstall Windows Boot Manager in the new ESP with a Windows 
install/repair medium. I do not know if there is another way, e.g. by 
manually copying specific files to /EFI/Microsoft in the ESP.