Linux Screencasts forum - Suggestion for Fedora dual boot with Windows

Hi all:

Yes, my first post and I am sure to make mistakes. Here goes.

Regarding suggestions for Linux Screencasts forum. I constantly struggle with dual boot with Windows. I read so many blogs that my eyes cross. Its even more confusing now with UEFI partitions. It happened today and now Windows is not booting. Screencasts sound like a windfall.

What I need to know:

1. Exactly where are the dual boot files located?
2. Where are examples of working dual boot files?
3. What tools do I need to access dual boot files when my system is not working?
4. If I use Windows tools to fix Windows boot then Fedora boot is overwritten. What do I need to watch?
5. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

There are my suggestions for today. Hope it generates food for thought. :-)

first thing is create a NEW account that dose NOT use your email as a user name
( and set up a NEW primary email account that one will be flooded with spam)

this forum is indexed by SPAM!!! BOTS

your email address as a user name WILL get SPAMED

Welcome to LQ! As you can tell by the slow responses, your question is difficult to answer, because it provides little information on what actually went wrong.
Let me try to give you some pointers.

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com Regarding suggestions for Linux Screencasts forum.

I personally have no idea what screencasts forum is, and how it would be related to dual boot problems, so I'll ignore that part of your question for now...

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com It happened today and now Windows is not booting.

What exactly happened? What was the last thing you did before Windows stopped booting. Please post the commands you ran. You might still find them in your command history by running

history

Ideally also post the output (if possible from memory).

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com 1. Exactly where are the dual boot files located?

There is no such thing as "dual boot files". You mentioned that you are using EFI. I will assume you are using grub2. Everything should be located in /boot
Typically your efi partition would be mounted in /boot/efi. The file containing the actual configuration is /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. If you have a backup of that file from when everything worked as expected, it would be worth comparing it to the current state. Note however that this file is automatically generated and should hence not be edited by hand. (As it will get overwritten by grub).

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com Where are examples of working dual boot files?

You want to read up on grub configuration. Have a look at the fedora wiki or the arch wiki page on grub.

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com What tools do I need to access dual boot files when my system is not working?

Depends on what you mean by "system not working". Can you still boot linux? If so, you can access everything you need from your running system under linux. If not, you can use a live system and inspect the configuration from there. You can also repair quite a bit, but that is a slightly more advanced topic. Read up on "chroot".
If you at least get to the grub menu, you can also inspect the code of every menu entry by selecting the entry and typing "e". You can then change the commands that will be run which might enable you to boot your system. Note that such changes are not permanent.

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com If I use Windows tools to fix Windows boot then Fedora boot is overwritten. What do I need to watch?

You'll have to reinstall grub. Which you'd have to do from within a live system. (See above)

Originally Posted by garyevansbtc@gmail.com Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Depending on how much is broken the repair procedure might not be simple. One thing is for sure though: The more detailed information you provide, the more detailed the help will be that you can expect to get here.

I am sure the above will be of little help to you. Can you please describe in as much detail as possible what exactly does not work, how it does not work, what messages you get and so on...