• Smee@poeng.link
    0·
    3 days ago

    I dual boot grub+linux from a wholly separate drive set as the boot drive, windows boot loader is unused, untouched, isolated on the windows drive.

    Windows update still broke grub.

    Pull my hair out for a few hours trying to find a fix, about to try something but have to reboot one last time.

    Everything is fine, back to normal.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 days ago

      same thing happened to me years ago. it was at that point I made the decision to never dual boot.

      I have two dedicated windows devices, and the rest are Linux.

      I did,for a time, dual boot by installing windows on an external m.2 drive over TB3 and had a grub entry in for it. I never updated windows and frankly only used it about once a month for work related bs.

      aaaaaahhhhhhhhh

  • frog_brawler@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    My windows ssd died about 2 weeks ago, but I was dual booting.

    Took out the windows drive, slapped in a new one and I was no longer getting failed smart checks.

    Happy to say that the windows drive that died was replaced with a new 990… that’ll be more storage for my Fedora Plasma system instead of getting windows 10 reinstalled. Win 11 was never a consideration but I did want to keep 10 around for as long as I could.

    c’est la vie

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    Easily solved. Just run mkfs_ext4 on the windows partition, and mount it as an additional filesystem.

  • Default_Defect@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Never happened to me, but then again, most of the shit I see people complain windows does has never been my experience either.

  • Opisek@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    I’ll do you one better. Do you know what a windows update killed on my multi boot system? It killed the windows bootloader. I’m working on a permanent solution to fixing this bootloader fudgery.

  • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    I’ve been dualbooting for over a year now. Made sure each system has its own separate drive. I’ve noticed that every time I had to reinstall Linux, my windows boot entry is gone and then I can’t access it no matter what I tried. Turned out installing Linux first then windows was my mistake. When installing windows while there is a Linux install, windows will see the EFI partition already there and just decides to share it, and doesn’t create its own.

    I found that out by accident while I was in windows’ storage management. There was no efi partition. Took a whole day to find out how to create one on the same drive where windows is installed and removing the one it created on the Linux partition. It was so painful.

    Bottomline, install windows first if you want to dualboot. After that, even if windows takes over the boot after an update, all it does is resets the boot sequence and makes it default to it. You’d just need to access the bios and reset the sequence to prioritize Linux. That’s it

    • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      When installing windows while there is a Linux install, windows will see the EFI partition already there and just decides to share it, and doesn’t create its own.

      That’s what it’s supposed to do, it’s a plain FAT32 partition, the bootloaders are just files you put in there.

      Part of the issue is that while a well-made motherboard will look for all bootloaders on the partition and present them as options in the firmware UI, bad ones will only look for a specific file (\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI) and use that. For an OS to have a chance of booting on those boards it has to overwrite that file, blowing away whatever other bootloader was there before.

      It’s annoying, since Windows is mostly well behaved here (It puts the main copy of the bootloader at \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi and Linux bootloaders can see that and offer it, the reverse isn’t true) and can co-exist with Linux well (Well…), but manufacturers cutting corners causes more problems for everybody.

      • JATth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        The \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI is the only file the UEFI standard says it is required automatically lookup from an EFI system partition. There can many EFI partitions but the UEFI is only required to find a single file per such a partition.

        efibootmgr -u can show all bios auto created boot entries (don’t touch those, the bios can/will reset them at whim) and the manually created entries that don’t launch a BOOTX64.EFI named file.

      • Shayeta@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Ahhh, so that’s why I’ve never had any issues with my linux first windows 10 second setup.

      • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        Wow, damn. I didn’t know the motherboard can have a hand in this. Stupid gigabyte then. I hope this time, windows stays in its lane if I ever had to reinstall Linux. Thank you for the explanation, btw. Much appreciated

        • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
          0·
          3 days ago

          I’d double check, if you haven’t picked an option specifically it might just default to the fallback (i.e. BOOTX64) It’ll be under the boot device order section.

          (Not my picture, stole it from Reddit)

          Here it’s listing all the possible boot options this mobo can find, but there’s a generic “UEFI OS” option which I’d bet is the fallback. And once a choice is made it’s kept unless something resets it, so if it just happened to be set to the fallback once it’ll stick with that until a change is forced.

          • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 days ago

            There WAS something weird that had a UEFI word in it, but choosing it shows nothing. I’d go over all the menu choices I see one by one and none of them takes me to windows. It was very annoying, all good now since I separated them. Next time this happens I’ll just ask on the Linux community. Hopefully you’ll pop up there and help. 😅

      • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        Maybe I’m fucking cursed. I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Installed Linux on a drive. Installed windows on another. Set the boot sequence in the BIOS to Linux. Installed osprober and ran it. The only different thing I have is the windows iso I use is stripped down using Chris Titus’ windows debloat script, and that one shouldn’t mess with anything as far as I know. It only debloats windows.

    • eronth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      3 days ago

      oh good to hear. I heard about windows doing jank stuff on update recently and was really worried I’d have to fight with it soon.

      • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Different updates will break different things for different machines. Some people are blessed by Bill Gates himself, and never have to re-fix their shit. Others are cursed and have to fix random shit unrelated to the update every fucking update.

        I can’t prove it, but I think microsoft does this on purpose so that some people will enthusiastically share their positive experiences with windows while everyone else gets shat on.

      • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        As long as you do what I mentioned in my comment, you’ll mostly be fine. Worst thing that could happen is a windows feature update resetting the boot sequence to itself only. It’s been a breeze.

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    3 days ago

    Pre-UEFI they were fighting over the boot sector, sure, but now that everything is more well defined, and every OS can read the FAT32 ESP? Never seen it…

    At worst the UEFI boot entry is replaced. There are some really shitty UEFI implementations out there which only want to load \efi\microsoft\boot\bootx64.efi or \efi\boot\bootx64.efi, or keep resetting you back to those.

    Assuming you were dumped into Windows suddenly, you can check if you have the necessary boot entries still with bcdedit and its firmware option

    bcdedit /enum firmware

    If you just have a broken order you can fix it with

    bcdedit /set {fwbootmgr} displayorder {<GUID>} /addfirst

    If you actually need a new entry for Linux it’s a bit more annyoing, you need to copy one of the windows entries, and then modify it.

    bcdedit /copy {<GUID1>} /d "Fedora"
bcdedit /set {<GUID2>} path \EFI\FEDORA\SHIM.EFI
bcdedit /set {fwbootmgr} displayorder {<GUID2>} /addfirst

    Where GUID1 is a suitable entry from windows, and GUID2 is the one you get back from the copy command as the identifier of the new entry. Of course you will have to adjust the description and the path according to your distro and where it puts its shim, or the grub efi, depending on which you’d like to start.

    Edit: Using DiskGenius might be a little more comfortable.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      3 days ago

      I don’t have a choice but to have Windows available. I have a close friend group who plays an old Half Life 1 mod online and it does NOT work at all on Linux. We’re the only people still playing it so there’s no support available. It’s janky sometimes even on Windows, but we’re never giving it up, it’s too much fun.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      on two separate physical drives Computers and this will never happen

      Password protecting “bios” usually works if you must dual-boot tho.

    • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 days ago

      Oh it absofuckinglutely happens. If you install Linux first then Windows, windows will see the boot partition and use it instead of creating its own. Install windows first on its own, then install Linux. How I know? Hmmmmm