I have a real simple solution that involves not windows
i use a different drive for my windows installation because that happened to often,
and i swear it once managed to wipe the bootloader on the linux drive.
i have no idea how it did that,
but i avoided starting windows using the grub entry since then.
Having two drives is sometimes not enough, either. I have no idea why, but anytime Windows installs for the first time or goes through a major update (not the small security patches, but the periodic feature releases) there's a random D20 dice throw to determine if it will randomly decide to create the bootloader and recovery partitions in another drive, even though your main installation isn't there.
I kid you not, Windows 10 once decided that my external SSD enclosure was the best place to put the bootloader.
This happened to me! Did an update, unplugged my eSATA and BAM! Can't find bootloader. I literally, physically facepalmed when I realized what happened. At least the old one still worked from the primary.
I've done a ton of Linux updates and this has never happened to me once (yet).
Pfft, even 2 separate ssds for dual booting doesnt stop this from happening to me -___-
On the plus side, this is the first i recall hearing of someone encountering the same issue, so i guess i dont feel as alone now.
it stopped happening to me after i stopped using the grub entry to boot windows.
i now use my mainboards boot menu to select the windows entry when i need to boot it
Windows has a lovely “feature” where it installs the bootloader on a secondary drive if there’s one connected. It doesn’t install it on drive 1 and drive 2, just drive 2. I always disconnect all secondary drives before installing windows for this very reason.
That said you can configure the windows bootloader to recognize your Linux (or grub) and just use that to manage booting two OSes and it’s less likely to not destroy things.
I swear at this point Windows users are collectively victims of Stockholm syndrome.
Yes, someone please come free us! I am being held hostage by Windows and Autodesk Inventor.
It's the usual problem: if your employer IT refuses to budge, you get locked into a Windows (or Apple) ecosystem. I had the same. My solution was to remove myself from corporate IT, and use my own device.
I use workarounds for the interfaces with corporate:
Picture this: you buy a car. You buy a new set of wheels/rims and a new radio system with Android and whatever. You also put some new carpets on the floor of the car. Now you need to take it for a simple routine maintenance and checkup at the car brand official shop. After a few hours you go back there to pick you car up and it has the stock wheels, stock radio, stock carpets and everything and you ask where the hell is your stuff and ALL of them on the shop look at you confused like if they never seen any different accessory on that car before other than the stock ones, or don't know what you are talking about. All they know is that the car is now "according to spec".
This is what it feels like after updating Windows with Linux in dual-boot on the same drive.
It's at least gotten a bit better.
There was a time when Photoshop and other programs used a copy-protection scheme that overwrote parts of grub, causing the user not to be able to boot Linux or Windows.
They knew about it, and just DGAF. I don't remember their exact FAQ response, but it was something along the lines of "Photoshop is incompatible with GRUB. Don't dual boot if you use Photoshop."
Grub still has code for BIOS based installs that uses reed-solomon error correction at boot time to allow grub to continue to function even if parts of its core.img were clobbered by shitty copy protection schemes for Windows software.
I have power switches for my drives. If I want to boot into windows, I turn that one on and the others off.
That's a really awesome idea. If I ever need an actual Windows install I'm totally going that route!
With UEFI it’s waaayyyy less bad than it used to be. There is no more MBR in the traditional sense for windows to clobber. Windows and Linux can share an UEFI boot partition both dropping in their appropriate boot binaries.
Even if you install Linux and Windows on separate devices, unless you do something strange they will share the same UEFI boot partition.
Personally, I do 2 separate UEFI boot partitions. Grub is the default which can select the windows boot partition. Then Windows can do whatever it wants to it's own boot partition.
Windows never knows the other partition exists and leaves it intact.
Hear me out: Class action lawsuit
Heard you and that wouldn’t fly. Just like you’re not supposed to run Windows on mission critical systems like nuclear reactors (seriously, check the EULA), running multiple operating systems side by side is most likely out of a supported configuration and “use at your own risk”. You’d have zero standing or less for any sort of lawsuit.
But just because it is in the EULA doesn't make it legal. At a time where big tech is being kept under a microscope for antitrust regulation, I'd say that an OS that actively destroys other competing OSes on the machine it is installed on should be considered an unfair anti-competitor tactic.
If I dual boot windows, I tend to disconnect my Linux drive any time I do anything on the Windows side. Even installing Windows fresh using default settings, it managed to completely erase my Linux disk to put the Windows bootloader on it even though I selected a completely different disk for the Windows OS. Won't be making that mistake again. And by mistake I mean dual booting Windows. That pile of spaghetti code gets a VM.
Two ssds is when you need to run stuff on windows that requires the bare metal.
Windows needs to be contained, controlled and told who is the boss, I suggest using Tiny11 or MicroXP in a VM for stuff that can't run in wine.
Micro xp... I got that to run on a Intel 400mhz laptop with 32mb of mainboard soldered sdram chips. Nothing like a a operating system under 200mb installed with a GUI.
Windows actually works better in a vm on Linux than on bare metal. And it's got a much smaller chance of breaking my PC that way too.
For the rare occasion that I need Windows bare metal, I have a Windows 11 installation on a usb ssd originally installed via the Rufus Windows-To-Go option that I can just plug into the system and boot off it whenever I need it without it touching my uefi menu or partition on my internal drives. This way I can also use it on another machine if that need arises. Windows can even trim the usb drive it's running on. It pretty much works as if installed internally.
That's why we need two ssds for dual boot
And one day, we will have updates that will tell us "Windows have fixed a drive with partition table issues."
Best is when it messes up it's own bootloader at the same time lol.
Remember kids, if you're gonna dual boot, stay safe, use 2 drives, and pray you're fast enough to mash the boot menu button when you power on.
Ugh, that's so annoying. Every time windows updates i have to open the BIOS and put ubuntu first on the boot order so it doesn't skip grub.
I Also have a drive that i can access on both linux and Windows and every so often Windows will make it inaccessible on Linux because it didn't fully unmount the drive.
Easy solution if you only have one SSD: instead of installing Windows as your second OS, install a different Linux distro.
Finally another beeing experiencing this issue..i wiped windows after this incident and never looked back
Just use rEFInd to easily overcome bootloader coups
Windows managed to brick itself when I booted for the first time in a month. I only wanted it for the Karafun app, but I guess I can live without it.
I haven't used my Windows drive in almost a year now, Thinking about throwing another distro on there right now.
This is why you don't duel boot. If Windows can't play nice with others it doesn't get to exist at all. Proton+Steam means there is never a reason to run windows at all. "But I need some non-game windows applications." K. Proton is able to reliably run games in a library of tens of thousands of games with all kinds of bad programming and obscure hardware use. It's a standard for being able to run windows apps in linux that is going to cover any other application you have.
Some people are sadly addicted to games with invasive anticheats
For me its the opposite, Linux always boots fine but occasionally a linux system update will break the Windows boot option in systemd-boot
Never trusted this setup to begin with because I didn't trust Microsoft and I'm not all that capable or want to take time to sort this stuff out on a regular basis.
So I just setup my ThinkPad laptop with two removable SSDs and I just swap one or the other whenever I need. The drive is easily switched, from power down, remove drive, insert other drive and restart only takes about two minutes.
I'm not going to risk messing up my setup because two operating systems can't work with one another.
Besides I seldom switch, I use Windows if I really have to about three or four times a year.
Hint: :q!
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