Installing GRUB fatal error on Dell laptop
Ok, I at long last found the issue, and it's that Dell laptops use what I think is a non-standard way to load EFI binaries as boot options, and on top of that, I think they use a 'hidden EFI system partition', from what I've heard. The steps I took to overcome this were simply to reinstall Windows from a USB stick, so that it created an ESP on the disk as opposed to wherever Dell keeps it by default.
Another option I think may be possible is to ntfsresize
the Windows partition and create an EFI system partition along with your bootloader of choice, then, in the Dell UEFI/BIOS add the .efi file as a boot option (in the case of GRUB on ubuntu it will be at /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi
, or just EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi
from the BIOS. I am, however, unsure whether GRUB will fail to install still on a distro such as Arch as it will be unable to write to the UEFI boot order with efibootmgr
.
Hope this helps anyone else with a Dell laptop struggling to dual boot!