When booting with GRUB, it is important that the core image and modules have matching versions. Usually, running grub-install is sufficient to ensure this. On the UEFI platform, grub-install allows the core image to be placed in two different locations: EFI/gentoo/grubx64.efi This is the location used by grub-install without options. EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI This is the location used by grub-install --removable. On upgrades, it is common for users to mismatch the grub-install options they used for the current and previous versions of grub. This will cause a stale core image to exist. For example: /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI (grub 2.06 core image) /boot/efi/EFI/gentoo/grubx64.efi (grub 2.12 core image) /boot/grub/x86_64-pc/*.mod (grub 2.12 modules) Booting this system using BOOTX64.EFI image would likely fail due to a symbol mismatch between the core image and modules. Re-runing grub-install both with and without the --removable options should ensure a working GRUB installation. However, this will clobber any BOOTX64.EFI image provded by other loaders. If dual-booting using another boot loader, users must take care not to replace BOOTX64.EFI if it is not provided by GRUB.