Windows EFI Partition Not Editable

Based on the following question: How to access efi partition on windows 10?

I have been unable to open the EFI partition by running the commands below:

mountvol

start \\?\Volume{xxxxxxx-ec0e-43ab-82ce-xxxxxxxxx}\

It says to look on the security tab, but upon opening the properties for the EFI partition there is no security tab!

Any suggestions would be helpful.

EDIT

Thanks for the replies. So I ran the following command to mount the drive.

mountvol S: /s

Then the following command to open up either Explorer++ or notepad.exe

"C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\Explorer++.exe"

notepad.exe

However, when finding the S:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi file and trying to copy it over to the C:\ drive I am getting the following error:

EDIT 2

Using notepad.exe or Explorer++ does not work for copying files to the C:\ drive. However, I was able to use the following command to copy files over from the EFI partition to the C:\ drive.

copy S:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\

Pie

Posted 2019-12-01T05:55:41.410

Reputation: 493

There isn't a security tab because the EFI partition is FAT32. You did issue that command as an Administrator in an elevated prompt? Did you try running the command start ((Get-Partition | ? IsSystem).AccessPaths[0]) instead? – Ramhound – 2019-12-01T05:59:01.850

Use the DISKPART commands ( from that original question) in Admin Command prompt to mount the EFI partition to a drive letter. Then use a freeware called Explorer++ https://explorerplusplus.com/download to seamlessly access EFI partition.

– patkim – 2019-12-01T07:34:21.467

Answers

I get the same issue using start ((Get-Partition | ? IsSystem).AccessPaths[0]).

You can however mount the EFI partition using mountvol s: /s from Administrator command prompt (changing s: to another letter if you wish).

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> mountvol s: /s
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> ls s:                                                                                           

    Directory: s:\


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
da----       01/12/2019     09:47                EFI
d-----       15/10/2019     16:08                temp
-a----       26/11/2019     09:31        6285696 vmlinuz-linux
-a----       21/11/2019     09:24        3120640 intel-ucode.img
-a----       26/11/2019     09:31        9709791 initramfs-linux.img
-a----       31/05/2019     17:19            503 refind_linux.conf
-a----       19/04/2019     13:45             87 keybindings.txt
-a----       15/11/2019     07:15           4119 BOOTLOG
-a----       05/07/2019     21:17       15552054 screenshot_001.bmp
-a----       05/07/2019     21:17       15552054 screenshot_002.bmp
-a----       26/11/2019     09:31       29906590 initramfs-linux-fallback.img


PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> mountvol s: /d

As the volume is mounted in administrator context it will not be visible in Explorer nor non-administrator command prompt.

You can however then run programs as administrator to access files on EFI partition. For example notepad.exe running as Administrator can see s: :

lx07

Posted 2019-12-01T05:55:41.410

Reputation: 1 415

Thanks for the reply, I tried your method but was unable to copy files over using Notepad. See my edit in the main post for more info. – Pie – 2019-12-02T04:56:38.347

The official way of mounting it is mountvol (drive letter) /S. You may then access it via CMD (administrator) or for a GUI you can download Explorer++ for free. Make sure to run it as administrator. To unmount the volume run mountvol (same drive letter as before) /D. Hope this helps

utaker

Posted 2019-12-01T05:55:41.410

Reputation: 43

Thanks for the reply, I tried your method but was unable to copy files over using Explorer++. See my edit in the main post for more info. – Pie – 2019-12-02T04:56:06.573

Did you run Explorer++ as administrator? Did you run mountvol S: /S as administrator? – utaker – 2019-12-02T07:33:43.437

Yes, please see the edit that I made to the original question. When opening explorer++ I ran the following command in the Admin CMD window ""C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\Explorer++.exe"" to open Explorer++. – Pie – 2019-12-04T04:11:08.733

I did. First, try opening Explorer++ through File Explorer, then going into the S: partition, locating bootx64.efi, (obviously) right-clicking it, selecting “Copy”, go back to the C: drive, click “Paste”. Alternatively, you can run “copy S:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi C:\path\to\folder”, without quotes. \path\to\folder is the folder you want to copy it to, if it contains spaces, put quotes around C:\path\to\folder. – utaker – 2019-12-04T06:56:59.480

Made a edit, was able to copy the file using CMD command but still unable to copy using notepad or Explorer++. Any suggestions? – Pie – 2019-12-05T03:32:28.507