rEFInd Boot Option and SteamOS boot option disappeared

[TheONE954]

Hello, i got my perfectly working Dual Booted Steam Deck to charge for the night and when i came back to it in the morning it just booted me straight into Windows and after some searching in the boot menu, the rEFInd boot opttion and the SteamOS one have just vanished. I am not sure what to do, do i just fresh install everything?

[jlobue10]

No, you don't need to reinstall everything. My guess as to what happened in your situation is that you had an update that included a BIOS update. What has often happened with the BIOS updates for Steam Decks that are using a dual boot setup, is that the EFI entries get completely wiped as part of the BIOS update and then the firmware re-adds an entry for Windows if it finds the Windows boto files on the /esp partition. The easiest way to solve this is to boot up with the volume and power on button combo and then boot from file /esp/efi/steamos/steamcl.efi. Once you boot into SteamOS, the systemd service should restore the missing EFI entries for SteamOS and rEFInd and everything should be fine with your setup again.

[TheONE954]

Well, i did what u said and it worked, they are all back but the order seems to be out of wack. So i ve gone back thru steamos desktop mode to reinstall the config and at first it did seem to work, but after booting into windows and then restarting it just goes back to windows, not to the rEFInd boot screen. I will try to manually change the order. While i was writing the message i was rebooting it a bunch of times and its perfect now. Not sure how ,but yeah.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the hard work to build this awesome plugin and for the continuous dedication to suport the people with their issues. Hope u got a patreon or something i would like to help u out ,as u did to all of us.
Have a great day going foreward!!!! <3 <3

[jlobue10]

Okay, so you fixed the first issue, now there's another common one. This other issue happens because if you don't disable the Windows EFI entry, the Windows EFI entry "hijacks" control of the boot order as top priority. There are a few ways to address this. The one that I recommend is to just disable the Windows EFI entry. Unfortunately this no longer works to do from SteamOS. The last time that I had done this successfully, I booted into a live iso of Kubuntu 23.04 and successfully disabled the entry from cli. Please show me the output of efibootmgr and I can help you with this.

And no, I don't have a Patreon as this all snowballed into a bigger thing than I realized and originally intended (happily so). The best way to support me is a few bucks via the PayPal dono button. I don't need the money, but it's definitely appreciated if people drop a few bucks here and there.

[TheONE954]

I mean i will show it to you ,but it works perfectly now.

[TheONE954]

BootNext: 0002
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002,0000,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* SteamOS HD(1,GPT,abe86bae-ba69-43e9-9451-3ddfa237ecb0,0x800,0x20000)/File(\EFI\steamos\steamcl.efi)
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,abe86bae-ba69-43e9-9451-3ddfa237ecb0,0x800,0x20000)/File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000033000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0002* rEFInd HD(1,GPT,abe86bae-ba69-43e9-9451-3ddfa237ecb0,0x800,0x20000)/File(\EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi)
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM RC
Boot2003* EFI Network RC

[TheONE954]

i don t think i have to do anything else cuz it works, but i guess u know more than i do.

[jlobue10]

Well, maybe you also did the other method where on Windows' side it's doing the same "BootNext" strategy with rEFInd (as the BootNext target). That's what one of those scripts that baldsealion helped with does. Either way, I'm happy all is working again for you.

[TheONE954]

I really did nothing special, just reinstalled the config from the desktop mode and that what was it.
Either way thank you sooo much and i will pay a visit to the paypal for sure.
Have a nice day!!!!

[0Downtime]

I had this same issue with the latest SteamOS update but now even after booting into Steamos via the /esp/efi/steamos/steamcl.efi file, and rebooting, it goes into a boot loop when selecting the Steam option on the boot screen. Any idea what the fix should be?

[jlobue10]

I had this same issue with the latest SteamOS update but now even after booting into Steamos via the /esp/efi/steamos/steamcl.efi file, and rebooting, it goes into a boot loop when selecting the Steam option on the boot screen. Any idea what the fix should be?

The last time that I had experienced something like this, a reinstall (not reimage!!) with the SteamOS recovery USB fixed up my Steam Deck. There are some manual steps that you will have to take to fix the Windows bootloader after doing this as described here.