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Yesterday I decided to install Fedora XFCE on my personal laptop, next to Windows 8.1, the installation was successful, the installer told me to reboot the system to start using Fedora.

During the installation I chose to create an LVM partition, without knowing what I was doing, which broke my Windows bootloader so I can't boot on Windows anymore neither on the installed Fedora system.

Now, when I boot up it directly takes me to the BIOS SETUP and the only live USB I can boot from is Ubuntu 16.04LTS.

Is there any way to change the partition type without damaging any of my personal data or having to reinstall everything?

I have an ext4 partition which is 1.00 GB and the LVM partition is around 400GB.

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Reset to default
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You cannot convert an LVM partition to a bare GPT/MBR partition. All you can do is arrange to copy the data elsewhere, then wipe the LVM partition and create GPT/MBR partitions, and finally create the data back. Don't do this: it would be complicated and pointless.

There is nothing wrong with using LVM. On the contrary, it's a lot easier to manage, so I recommend using it unless you have a good reason not to.

There is no incompatibility between LVM and dual boot. If the bootloader installation failed, that's a problem you need to solve, but it isn't a problem with the LVM partitions. It may be a bug in the installer that only shows up with LVM partitions, but the LVM partitions are not in themselves a problem.

You can probably recover your system using the Ubuntu live USB, by using it to boot into your system and reinstalling the bootloader from there. I don't know these tools well enough to guide you. A precise description of how the boot fails, including exact error messages, would be useful if you want help.

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  • Thanks for the tips. Fedora/Windows doesn't even boot up, it takes me directly to the BIOS setup. Do you think I can fix the problem by installing Ubuntu over Fedora to repair the GRUB then reinstall Fedora ?
    – user212219
    Jan 25, 2017 at 15:18
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    @MohammedBRAHMI It might work, or it might not. This kind of problem is really hard to analyze without being in front of the machine. I suggest trying first to use the live USB to boot into Fedora and tell it to repair its bootloader.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jan 25, 2017 at 21:00
  • @MohammedBRAHMI, Like Gilles said, you should try to repair GRUB first (no need to reinstall everything). Try searching grub repair here on SE, or just search the web.
    – Roflo
    Jan 26, 2017 at 15:12

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