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just did some partition table spring cleaning (deleted both windows recovery partitions, made a new windows recovery partition, deleted the EFI partition, created a new EFI partition large enough that Linux firmware updates should stop failing). time to reboot and pray!
narrator voice: the prayers were not answered. oh boy
shoutout to Lenovo for the nice ThinkPad graphical boot menu though (no matter which option I click, I return to this screen almost immediately)
used the Debian installer (on the drive we installed it from) in graphical rescue mode, which once I selected the root partition /dev/nvme0n1p7, helpfully mounted the EFI partition at /boot/efi for me, and then I told it to install GRUB in /boot/efi because that felt reasonable
and now Debian boots again! the rescue mode could really use some work and I'm not sure I used it correctly (should I have told it to go for the root partition instead?), but I'm grateful it exists, for sure
yay firmware update
ooh it rebooted to flash an embedded controller and then it rebooted again and is now doing a “BIOS Self Healing backup” :)
firmware vendors love to run the fans at full blast during firmware updates just in case
Windows 8.1's Startup Repair™ didn't think it could do anything… I wonder if it just doesn't know the new Windows 10 bootloader or something. there is a Windows 8.1 install on this system too. oh well. let's see if we can do something with its command-line tools…
strangely enough the Windows 8.1 disc got me into an environment that offers an option to “exit and continue to Windows 10 Pro” and, when using the command prompt, the BCD utility whose name I forget only detected the Windows 10 install, not the Windows 8.1 one…
I wonder if it somehow booted the Windows 10 recovery partition. in any case, that “exit and continue” option took me to… GRUB, and the BCD utility didn't fix the EFI problem. time to make new Windows 10 installation media I guess (I have a disc but it degraded somehow alas)