Removing Extra rEFInd boot options

Question

So I had to install rEFInd in order to dual boot linux + windows8 my MSI GE70 laptop.

But before that I used boot-repair to try fix, only after installing rEFInd did i find out that I should undo boot-repair. ooops

Anyway now I have a few extra options, and was curious which ones I could delete from the boot partition or which I should hide, and how to do that.

I have these options:

• Linux (simplified, this is my Linux Mint install I can keep this)
• EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi
• EFI\Boot\BOOTX64.efi
• Windows (simplified, this is my win8.1 install, I can keep this)

So basically I'm asking if I need the refind_x64.efi and BOOTx64.efi

Answer 1

Any sub-directory on EFI System partition is regarded as company/maker directory and is added automatically as boot choice by UEFI firmware boot manager (the corresponding .efi boot loaders or managers in these directories are added with their paths).

You can delete a whole EFI sub-directory, so you delete the UEFI boot entry.

Examples for EFI sub-directories:

EFI\Boot - this is fallback

EFI\Microsoft - needed if you have Windows

EFU\ubuntu - needed if you have Ubuntu

EFI\refind - rEFInd boot manager and files

There could be also other "second level" boot choices which are coming from the selected OS boot configuration (for Windows this data is in BCD, for Linux/GRUB2 this data is in grub.cfg for example).

rEFInd should have his configuration file too - "refind.conf" I think.

Answer 2

If you want to remove rEFInd boot option, goto system32 folder with cmd admin permission and change to the rEFInd installed directory.Then type rmdir /S {refind name}.I think it will be ok.