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Windows just fucked up my bootloader...
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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How else would one motivate itself to learn about grub, boot partitions, UEFI, MBR and all the other wonderful crufty technologies involved in starting operating systems?
Is it just me or does no one actually know how any of it works, and everyone relies on a mixture of
grub-install,os-prober,Boot Repair,bootcfg, and random internet guides to make it all work? I dual boot windows and linux and I don't understand where any of the boot files actually live or how they function. It feels like the deeper I dig, the more nondeterministic it all is.EFI booting is pretty straightforward, and you can mount and browse the efi boot partition easily to see the actual executable files, and view the entries added to firmware to point to them with efibootmgr.
MBR booting was not so fun.
There are resources out there to learn exactly what's going on, and the process is not too complex.
I've recovered a bunch of nuked MBR records and broken boot partitions myself, and maybe things UEFI added some complexity, but it's not hard if you have a live USB ready and know the appropriate conjurations.
Most of the fun comes from self centered arrogant companies that make monocultural software, blatantly ignoring that other OSs may already be installed.
I've spent the last two nights trying to rescue a windows installation from a rescue usb, and no amount of BCD recovery seems to help. It has forced me to take a closer look at the EFI partition, but even deleting it outright and recreating it from scratch still won't boot. I think there must be something corrupted and I should just give up and reinstall. That's windows for ya...
An example of something I just don't understand, after deleting and recreating the EFI partition, and using bcdboot to repopulate it, I now see two Windows Boot Manager BBS entries listed in BIOS. No idea why, no idea how to find out. One site said I must have multiple entries in my BCD, but bcdedit just shows the standard
{bootmgr}and{default}OS entries.