rEFInd mountvol incorrect parameter

Question

I had Ubuntu 14.04 on a single drive. Then, I felt like installing Windows 10 along side with Ubuntu. I resized the main Ubuntu partition and unallocated half of the safe. Then, I installed Windows 10 in that half of the unallocated space that I got. One thing I knew before doing all of it: that boot manager will not work properly and I'll not be able to boot into Ubuntu but I am already using rEFInd on my MacBook pro(bootcamp 8.1 & yosemite) and knew that it would fix every boot issue. So, followed the instructions.

1) Download rEFInd lastest(Beta) Zip file and extracted it.

2) When I reached second step of the instruction. i.e. mountvol S: /S it return me The parameter is incorrect. I have just one drive i.e. C: in my pc. What is this S: for? I also change that to mountvol C: \C and return disk not empty result.

3) So, googled and there were no results that explains about ESP. All I could find is the EFI. I found a related result and mounted System Reserved to E:. using diskpart. Then, I followed all the instructions. Kept all the data inside of system reserved. Rebooted and nothing happened.

Did I messed everything? Or What?

Solution

The mountvol command is supposed to mount the ESP as the S: drive. You can change the drive identifier (S:), but not the option (/S). It's conceivable that this command would fail if something else is already mounted at S:. (I'm the author of rEFInd, and used S: in the Windows instructions because it's a high enough letter that it's unlikely to already be used but not so high that it might be used by something starting from the top.)

If you can't get around it in Windows, then I have four other recommendations:

• Use your firmware's boot manager (typically accessed by hitting a function key; but which one depends on your computer) to select your Ubuntu installation. Whatever boot program you'd been using (GRUB, rEFInd, or something else) should still be present. You'll then be able to boot into Ubuntu and install rEFInd using the Debian package or PPA; or if you'd been using GRUB, you can restore it as the default by using efibootmgr: First type sudo efibootmgr alone to see what boot options are defined, then use -o to set a boot order, such as sudo efibootmgr -o 3,5 to set Boot0003 first and Boot0005 second.
• In a Windows Administrator command prompt, type bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi to set rEFInd as the default (if you'd previously installed it in Ubuntu) or bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi (to set GRUB as the default; but if you're booting with Secure Boot active, change grubx64.efi to shimx64.efi).
• Download the USB flash drive or CD-R version of rEFInd, prepare a boot medium with it, and boot it. You should then be able to boot into Ubuntu and either install rEFInd from Ubuntu or restore your previously-used boot loader, as noted earlier.
• Try EasyUEFI. This is a Windows program that may help you manage your EFI boot options. I've never used this tool, though, and I don't know offhand if it will mount your ESP for you (which would be required to install rEFInd) or just enable you to restore GRUB to bootability.

Note that if you restore GRUB to be the default, you'll probably need to run sudo update-grub in Ubuntu to get it to recognize the new Windows installation.

Comments

[P S Solanki]

Hi there @Rod, sorry for digging on an old thread. I tried three things, (1). I have C: and D: drives on my SSD. I tried mountvol C: /C and received not empty error. changed that to mountvol C: /S as you mentioned above, same error. Then I tried mountvol D: /S and mountvol D: /D, all of them failed with a directory not empty error. Then I decided to create another partition of around 4 Gigs. Assigned letter F to this NTFS partition. and still the same error when running mountvol F: /S and mountvol F: /F. What am I missing here?

[Rod Smith]

@PSSolanki: You need to specify a drive letter that's not currently in use. For instance, if you have C: and D: drives, you'd need to specify E:, F:, G:, or some letter other than C: or D:.

[P S Solanki]

Gee That works. Neat. Thanks :)