I have a laptop on which I installed arch and created two partitions (I have a 1TB HDD), first partition of size 1G (swap) and a second partition that takes the rest of the space for system and personal data. After a while I decided to create a partition for Windows, so I made a bootable Gparted usb and shrunk the second partition by 256 GB. I successfully installed Windows on the newly created partition, but the problem is now when I boot my computer the Linux install doesn’t show up at all in the boot menu. Disk management on Windows detects the Linux partitions but I can’t access my previous install. Is there any solution ?
It’s a known Microsoft tactic at this point. Installing Windows after Linux will wipe your bootloader (grub, systemd-boot etc.). Installing Linux after Windows will enable it, but on Windows updates, Microsoft will delete it again.
It’s best to install the Linux bootloader on a different device, even on an SD card or USB flash drive. Just make sure that the other storage is always plugged in when you are booted into Linux.
To fix it, chroot into arch and reinstall grub, or change the boot partition, copy the stuff from the old /boot and slap install grub on the sd / usb drive.
Thanks for your help, this is my second bad experience with dual booting windows and linux, I wouldn’t have installed windows if I didn’t really need to anyway.
Yes, microsoft will make it as painful as possible to dual-boot. The best experience is to run Windows in a VM in arch using virt-manager. For advanced users, VFIO / GPU Passthrough is where it’s at (and how I run windows).
I just suffered with this on my laptop. I thought it looked like the new VMD BIOS setting, but I couldn’t find anything in BIOS or advanced BIOS. After a Windows11 update I ended up with “no bootable device found.” Windows auto-repair failed. Live linux media couldn’t detect any drives! After a couple previous Windows updates disabled linux boot, I was able to re-install grub via live media and recover. I was able to recover data from my linux installation this time by using an m.2 ssd case and cable (I have another computer running linux). The Mint forum offers a couple alternatives to dual-booting on the same drive; 1. Disconnect the Windows disk and add new drive, or 2. Buy a refurb to run Windows.
I ended up using #1 inadvertently. I installed Fedora on an external SSD while no system was installed on a new NVME drive and then installed Windows11 on the NVME ssd while the external disk was disconnected.
I had seen recommendations against dual-booting and multi-booting, but thought I had gotten away with it since the linux distros booted from separate FAT32 partitions on the NVME ssd.
Guess I have to learn the hard way!
This is why Microsoft should still not be trusted. Either they are incompetent code-monkeys, writing software that just deletes your bootloader randomly (which I doubt), in which case you shouldn’t trust them to write quality software to keep your data safe (some people had their entire disks formatted in a certain windows update, not even in the c:\windows.old folder), or they’re entirely malicious and they’re writing code that only keeps your windows bootloaders safe, but deletes anything else.
It’s a little bit of both, but their malicious intents are made apparent, when people have filed complaints on their support website for years and they didn’t address it at all. They’re aware windows does this and they don’t care, because that’s what’s intended to do.
Virtualization is my preferred method, but the only 2 other ways of dual booting that would be effective are either:
have a device that allows you to completely unplug your drive in an easy matter (like the old thinkpads and dell latitude e5420 to e5440 and their e55 counterparts, which have 1 or 2 screws that allows you to remove the 2.5" ssd completely)
use a full-sized SD card as your boot device (the vfat partition) for linux and have it always in read-only mode, until there’s an update - don’t install the update until you unmount /boot, remove the sd, put it in rw, plug it in and mount it
The 1st solution is ideal, but only really works easily with PCs that allow you to connect a hot-swap tray. The 2nd is almost as inconvenient, but prevents any unauthorized write / delete from it. Thankfully you don’t need to reboot to change it in rw mode. And it does work with a USB full-sized SD card reader.
But for the 2nd option, you need to worry if windows will ever, in the future, try to format your other present disks with ntfs, just because it’s “unformatted” (it’s actually formatted with ext4, xfs or lvm, but MS can’t read these). Apparently, btrfs seems to be supported in windows, that could prevent it from formatting it.
If you have the option to stop using windows, or at least if you can run it virtualized, do it.
just reading this now-old thread and cannot believe I have not had this problem before??? I have dual booted for a long time, but barely used the windows side… often turned off networking devices in win after install.
THANKS!
you have likely saved me from an unpleasant surprise.
sounds like I have some homework to do on running win in VM!
