EFI partition size - please help after clean install Win 10 for Multiboot

[wildmanjohn]

I have a Thinkpad T440p. Its not my main computer. I bought it to play around with and learn how to Multi boot. I have basic understanding of computers but get a little lost when dealing with bios uefi and boot-loaders. I had the laptop Triple booted, was following a guide i picked out. When I got to the part where i installed the new boot manager (Clover) everything went down hill. Window would not boot, Linux would not boot and I was unable to fix the issue from MacOS. After days of trying to get it working and finally gave up and started over. I wiped the hard drive and did a clean install of Windows 10 64bit. The partition Table is GPT. After installing windows i looked in Disk Management and found I have a 529 MB recovery partition in NTFS, a 100 MB EFI system partition in FAT32, and a 16 MB partition called Reserved that doesn't show up in Disk Management. I was advised to use Refind this time around instead of Clover. I've read contradicting information about these partitions. Some say the EFI needs to be increased and some say the recovery needs to be moved. Please help and tell me the right way to set this up. I do play to attempt multi booting again.

 

[Snuffy]

basicallly if you want to Dual or Triple boot, leave your partition alone, since any additional OS will use the proper partitions as originally set by MS. NO PARTITION NEEDS TO BE EXPANDED... SIMPLY take Partition 4 your primary and shrink (since you have 698 Gb) shrink into equal partitions of approx 230Gb, now you have 3 partitions to use for OS.
1. is you Drive C: #2 and #3 will be as you chose. then install the next OS into a clean partition then you add the new drive using BCDEDIT, Then you have a Dual Boot, and if you add another OS to the 3d clean partition and add it usind BCDEDIT you have a Triple Boot. you can use MSCONFIG to change the default BOOT OS or set it to wait until you chose which one... I suggest you rename ea one so that you know -

such a program to assist you in adding - allow you to rename ea is EasyBCD and it is FREE.
also a nice Program to assist in change partition size (FREE) is MiniToolPartition. any search will take you to the manufacture site(s).

 

[wildmanjohn]

basicallly if you want to Dual or Triple boot, leave your partition alone, since any additional OS will use the proper partitions as originally set by MS. NO PARTITION NEEDS TO BE EXPANDED... SIMPLY take Partition 4 your primary and shrink (since you have 698 Gb) shrink into equal partitions of approx 230Gb, now you have 3 partitions to use for OS.
1. is you Drive C: #2 and #3 will be as you chose. then install the next OS into a clean partition then you add the new drive using BCDEDIT, Then you have a Dual Boot, and if you add another OS to the 3d clean partition and add it usind BCDEDIT you have a Triple Boot. you can use MSCONFIG to change the default BOOT OS or set it to wait until you chose which one... I suggest you rename ea one so that you know -

such a program to assist you in adding - allow you to rename ea is EasyBCD and it is FREE.
also a nice Program to assist in change partition size (FREE) is MiniToolPartition. any search will take you to the manufacture site(s).

Thank you, thats what i'm going to do. I really appriciate your input. How do I keep Grub from installing to the windows EfI partition?

 

[Snuffy]

simple do not use GRUB it is not necessary

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Not knocking ThinkPads. Some say the only good thing to come out of Lenovo. I am not sure it would be my choice to multi-boot. Lenovo's rules which seem to be a carry-over from the IBM days are more confining than some of the others. Add to that the pant-load of drivers needed to get a ThinkPad fully functional and not sure it's a great system to screw around with. Lenovo does do a better job than some with Linux support but that's pretty much for the business flavored distros.
Don't get me wrong TP's are some of my favorite machines. I own an i7 T460s and love it. Very powerful and one of the toughest UltraPortables out there. Well good luck with your project. It should be a good learning experience for you. You will learn the ins and outs of a Lenovo ThinkPad. The good news is they do make sense and are there for a reason. It just a little more work until you get used to them.

 

[jamvaru]

a rather fool-proof way to multi-boot is to use different or separate hard drives, or removable drives, depending on whether the OS in question will accept that as a boot drive or not.
Some versions of Linux do work on a usb drive or thumb drive. Other versions will install in the same partition as windows. Some will run within windows, concurrently. Of course you can also use a virtual machine.
I'm not sure about macOS, as that is apple, and I just can't stand them. Windows/MS is bad enough, but something about apple... idk. The Richard Stallman page has a good section on apple explaining everything. It is a bit ridiculous.
Also not sure about installing windows on usb. So for laptop this method might not be feasable. Some laptops have removable hdd, but probably not many.
Basically you have 3 different OS and can only use one at a time, so.... ? Better to have one os that you use all the time. I used to goof with that. Now I have a real copy of windows on my desktop that works pretty good. Still 'glitchy windows', but mostly functional. I play games.
My laptop has linux. I keep trying different versions as it is an older laptop and more difficult to find something good AND compatible. So that is more of a geek hobby really. I don't use it much.
I thought about getting an apple device, but did not. I'd say just sell it and get something else.