Resolving “No x64-based UEFI boot loader was found” when starting Ubuntu virtual machine – Stefan Johner

in Linux

Resolving “No x64-based
UEFI boot loader was
found” when starting
Ubuntu virtual machine

I have a small, virtualized Linux lab on my notebook which I only use
occasionally. Since I reinstalled my machine some weeks ago I had to
recreate all Hyper-V virtual machines which lounge around somewhere on
the disk. No big deal I thought, but when starting my Ubuntu virtual
machines, I got the following message saying that “No x64-based UEFI boot
loader was found”.
Hmm… well I am no Hyper-V expert in any way so I was first a little
confused when I hit this message. I started debugging by disabling Secure
Boot in VM settings but this did not change the situation at all.

After some troubleshooting I noticed that for this particular Linux VM, the
File boot entry created by the Ubuntu installer was missing. It seems as if
for Windows VMs the appropriate File boot entry is created automatically if
missing.

For Linux VMs (or Ubuntu at least, I can’t tell about other distributions but
assume it is the same) this is not the case. Fortunately solving the issue is
pretty straight forward using Ubuntu rescue mode:

1. Boot into a rescue system
2. Select Force GRUB installation to EFI removable media path
3. Reboot

Forcing GRUB installation to EFI removable media path does basically the
same thing as when Ubuntu installer asks you if you want to force UEFI
installation: it installs to the removable media path in the ESP (EFI System
Partition). This is fine for environment where no other operating system is
present. However if there is another operating system present on the device
which depends on this fallback location “removable media path” it will

make this system temporary unbootable (you can manually configure
GRUB later to boot it if necessary though).
Windows installer for example also installs to the removable media path in
the ESP. All OS installers installing things to this removable media path will
conflict with any other such installers and that’s why in Debian (and
Ubuntu) installers don’t do this by default. You explicitly have to select
UEFI mode during the normal installation (what I did).

Forcing GRUB installation to EFI removable media path will re-create the
shimx64.efi File boot entry for your virtual machine. Next time instead of
just backing up the vhdx files, maybe an export of the VM’s might be the
better option.

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 Write a Comment

some_random_user

February 27, 2017

After 3 hours of searching around and testing stuff I finally found your article.
Thanks a lot, you saved my day!

Reply to some_random_user

Zak

June 15, 2017

Amazing. I spent 2 days trying to figure this out until I found your walkthrough.
Thanks so much!!

Reply to Zak

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This work by Stefan Johner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License.

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