grub-install: error: cannot find EFI directory. (Reinstalling Grub Boot Loader Windows 10/Kali Linux Dual Boot with Dual Hard Drive)

Question

I have 2 hard drive (SSD) in my laptop. One hard drive has windows 10 installed and other hard drive has kali linux installed. After reinstalling Windows 10 my kali linux grub boot loader isn't working anymore. So I tried to reinstall grub boot loader for kali linux with kali live cd.

I used these commands to install grub boot loader for kali linux:

sudo mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev &&
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts &&
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc &&
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sdb

Whenever I write the command:

grub-install /dev/sdb

I get an error message "grub-install: error: cannot find EFI directory."

Can anyone please help me out!

Here's fdisk -l result:

kali@kali:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 447.14 GiB, 480113590272 bytes, 937721856 sectors
Disk model: WDC WDS480G2G0A-
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: E85DA061-C60D-4CA9-9EEF-B703A8B89C96

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdb1         34     32767     32734    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sdb2      32768 734455807 734423040 350.2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdb3  734455808 745361407  10905600   5.2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdb4  745361408 922120191 176758784  84.3G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb5  922120192 937719807  15599616   7.4G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sda: 238.49 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: SanDisk SD9SN8W2
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: AC00DC72-4C02-49E3-B211-9AC5CB577E09

Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1     2048   1085439   1083392   529M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2  1085440   1290239    204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sda3  1290240   1323007     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4  1323008 500117503 498794496 237.9G Microsoft basic data


Disk /dev/sdc: 15.12 GiB, 16231956480 bytes, 31703040 sectors
Disk model: v165w           
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x121f4f51

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *        0 7539839 7539840  3.6G  0 Empty
/dev/sdc2       20412   21275     864  432K ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
kali@kali:~$ 

Here's blkid result:

kali@kali:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/sdb1: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="117cfa3e-e16a-4240-b6bc-c1fd34f0d7c6"
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="Data" UUID="92360F97360F7C0B" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="d59a6755-9afd-4eb2-8975-9b1ed0558568"
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="Extra" UUID="5CBC4FB1BC4F848C" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="2230936f-4a3c-4812-ac5b-ec4dc56f5eb1"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="214bbee0-4f90-455c-9703-5b9518bbbca1" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="c3962ed9-e800-40e1-8e99-0d159533cdf3"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="6dd82a88-7622-4d48-b8ec-1e27b379ae9b" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a5f85b50-533b-4ded-86b6-33c1ca7c6a46"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="Recovery" UUID="F4C46F12C46ED700" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="cbc4ba92-f9e1-4318-b564-c9cdb4fbd673"
/dev/sda2: UUID="7071-13EF" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="2ffb528c-6180-446e-8d9a-39f544dccbdd"
/dev/sda3: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="a8ebfdac-d662-435c-a75f-e87989ae9f78"
/dev/sda4: LABEL="OS" UUID="46E281D3E281C81F" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="39245a43-640e-4d8c-b3a6-5e815dbc8680"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="2020-05-08-14-35-45-00" LABEL="Kali Linux amd64 1" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="121f4f51" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="121f4f51-01"
/dev/sdc2: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="E35D-15CD" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="121f4f51-02"
kali@kali:~$ 

fdisk -l screenshot:

blkid screenshot:

Solution

This type of issue is common enough with windows 10. It has a habit of reformatting your EFI partition.

Grub-install for EFI installs a file to the EFI file system. It's not intelligent enough to mount the filesystem for itself first. It expects the EFI partition to be already mounted to /boot/efi.

Locate your EFI partition with blkid. It should be a vfat file system 0.5GB or less. Then mount it to /boot/efi and check you now have a directory /boot/efi/EFI

This will then let you run grub-install

---

Based on your screenshot that means you need:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /boot/efi
sudo grub-install

Comments

[Philip Couling]

Please use code blocks and copy text from your terminal rather than screenshots.

[Shateel]

after executing this command sudo mount /dev/sda2 /boot/efi sudo grub-install grub boot loader came back however now there's no windows 10 listed in the grub boot loader. I can only boot kali linux.