Linux Mint overwrote the EFI partition for Zorin

[Outlander]

I had wanted to take a look at Linux Mint and installed it to my second drive. I did a custom install and was very careful to make sure the drive selected for "boot loader installation" was that second drive and not the drive Zorin was installed to. However, it still decided to use the EFI partition on the Zorin drive.

I am ready to delete Mint. I actually prefer Zorin.

Is it possible to overwrite the EFI partition on the Zorin drive so it is back to how it was?

[Ponce-De-Leon]

When You have deleted Mint You could try it with Boot Repair. Create a bootable Stick with Zorin and start it and choose the Try Zorin Mode. Then look in the Start Menu for Boot Repair and start it.

[Outlander]

Thanks but I just fixed this by myself with a bit of searching on the net. What I did is this:

• formatted the Zorin EFI partition (this may have been overkill and deleting the EFI folder would have been enough)
• took note of the UUID of the EFI partition
• mounted the EFI partition with "mount /dev/[drive] /boot/efi
• ran "grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi"
• ran "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg"
• then edited /etc/fstab with the new UUID for /boot/efi
• checked that /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg had the UUID of the root partition

Rebooted and now my PC loads straight into Zorin just like it did before I installed Mint.

I'll definitely keep Boot Repair in mind although I am going to try and avoid there being a next time. It sounds a far easier solution

[Ponce-De-Leon]

When this works, okay. Then You should please mark this as the Solution. Other Users with the same Issue could find this helpful.

[Outlander]

Marked as solution.

It also allowed me to properly setup Mint so that Zorin and Mint now have their own EFI partitions on the same drive they are installed to. I was ready to stick with Zorin. However, today I've found a couple of issues with Zorin that don't occur in Mint so will stick with the dual boot for now.