multi boot: deleting a GPT partition with sgdisk before the Windows 10 partition breaks Windows 10 boot

Question

After deleting my first partition from Debian with sgdisk, I get a BSOD when booting Windows 10:

Votre appareil a rencontré un problème et doit être redémarré. Nous allons redémarrer l'ordinateur pour vous. Code d'arrêt : IO1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

which in English gives:

Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We'll restart for you. Stop code: IO1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

I had two WINRE partitions after the Windows 10 migration. The first WINRE partition was the Windows 8.1 one and the fifth partition is the Windows 10 one. System ESP partition was the second partition, Windows 10 system the fourth partition, and Microsoft Reserved partition the third partition. I have a Debian system on the sixth partition.

sudo sgdisk -p /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Model: CT1000MX500SSD1 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 3A174052-4E14-4820-A5DB-6BFF35BC13E2
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 20252532 sectors (9.7 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         2050047   1000.0 MiB  2700  
   2         2050048         2582527   260.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   3         2582528         2844671   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved ...
   4         2844672       136246776   63.6 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   5       136247296       137547775   635.0 MiB   2700  
   6       137549824       473094143   160.0 GiB   8300  /
   7       473094144      1899075583   680.0 GiB   8300  
   8      1919322112      1953523711   16.3 GiB    8200  

after deleting the first partition with sgdisk, I get:

sudo sgdisk -p /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Model: CT1000MX500SSD1 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 3A174052-4E14-4820-A5DB-6BFF35BC13E2
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 22300532 sectors (10.6 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   2         2050048         2582527   260.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   3         2582528         2844671   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved ...
   4         2844672       136246776   63.6 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   5       136247296       137547775   635.0 MiB   2700  
   6       137549824       473094143   160.0 GiB   8300  /
   7       473094144      1899075583   680.0 GiB   8300  
   8      1919322112      1953523711   16.3 GiB    8200 

The aim was to switch to systemd-boot which requires a bigger than 260MiB partition to hold my two kernels and their initrd in the system EFI partition with Debian initramfs-tools config /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf MODULES=most (it is fine with MODULES=dep though). Thus I planned to delete this first partition and expand my system partition (the second) with this new space.

Answer 1

I fixed this error by running: sudo sgdisk -s /dev/sda this renumbered the GPT partition in the order of their allocations and without any hole in the numbering.

Mind if you rely on the partition number on Linux to mount your partition this will change those numbers (that is /dev/sda3 will become /dev/sda2 if sda1 was removed and the sort option is passed to sgdisk).

Also, I tested and this numbering change does not affect EFI BCD entries.

By trial and error I sorted out that any hole in the GPT partition numbering before the Windows OS partition leads to the above error, that is BSOD with IO1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED. If the hole is after the Windows OS partition, Windows boots fine.

I tested deleting this first partition with the Windows Disk Management tool and this tool renumbers the partition on its own (ie after booting into Debian and running sudo sgdisk -p /dev/sda the partition has already been renumbered starting from 1 and without missing numbers.

With the missing number 1 in the GPT partition numbering, I tried to boot to WINRE which proceeded fine but the "Startup Repair" tool was unable to fix this issue. The "Startup Settings" and booting to "Safe Mode" did not help to workaround the issue either.

The Windows 10 boot "Automatic repair" did not better and ended up with "Your PC did not start correctly".

Note that by adding displaybootmenu and timeout 3 to the Microsoft BCD on the EFI partition I get the boot menu, then choosing "Windows 10" I get the above BSOD Stop code: IO1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED. So the issue is after the EFi and BCD, ie on the Windows OS partition.

There are other means to end up with the IO1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED stop code. A GPT numbering hole before the Windows OS partition is one of them.