This is why I no longer dual boot and removed windows all together.

Realized I hadn’t booted Windows on my personal PC in 6 months and said yup time to nuke it all together

idk what this meme means because i've never considered dual booting

I honestly never had isses as long as both are kept on separate drives

I mean, that's what happens when you install spyware; it infects things...

I've had one issue in the past year and a half, dual booting from the same NVMe.
After fixing the boot partition issues from a liveUSB, the actual solution was disabling fast-boot.
It's been solid for a year now.

But I always shutdown my laptop when I'm not using it. And any windows updates that require restarts, I make sure it fully reboots into windows again.

Considering Bill Gates made it, you can expect it to be grabby and invasive.

If I didn’t have to use it a handful of times a year for work I’d have wiped my windows drive and extended my Linux storage. Alas.

I feel for the folks who can’t afford a second drive to dual boot.

is there a way to avoid this? and what workflow should be in place ahead of it happening if not?

In my experience, Windows only fucks-up your Linux bootloader if they both share the same EFI System Partition. Keeping them separate fixes the issue. Though, this means that you'll have to install Windows first, since it will automatically pick your Linux ESP otherwise.

It's been about while so I don't recall if I had them on separate drives or not but windows would delete the linux boot partition during updates.

This was always really funny to me. Gonna do an update behind my back? Great. Go ahead lol

Yeah, that regularly happens if both are on the same drive. I think windows should be in the front and Linux behind it to avoid it, but you never know

Yup and adding a password to the BIOS was recommended to me by some sysadmin online. Don't know how that specifically helps but haven't had problems since.

Separate hard drives one for windows and one for Linux+GRUB then grub just needs to be told where the windows boot loader is and BIOS should load GRUB default.

OP post happens when you attempt to just use partitions. It can work per other comment, just more fragile.

the cat in the image is windows update taking over the linux boot partition: the box, instead of leaving it alone for the much more comfortable windows boot partition: the cat tree.

This is the only way to go.

Oh no! Not an extra hundred milliseconds to post!

And it's still faster for my linux install to boot.
LUKS password for disk encryption, then user login to a usable desktop with network connectivity.
Windows takes ages to get to a login screen (bitlocker is disabled, so no decryption excuse), logging in is a breeze with fingerprint reader (certainly faster than typing in a password), then it sits there for ages looking like it's ready to be used, but the network stack isn't ready and it is just unusable until that comes up.

I'm so happy when I get a day of just working in Linux.
It just... Works.

There are two or three work functions that can only be done on Windows when working from home. So it gets its own Windows 10 VM with just enough resources to perform those functions, installed with a local account and ShutUp10 to remove all the automated "feature" updates. If something goes wrong, I can nuke it and lose nothing.

I have five machines, one headless, the other four on KVM, 2 Linux 2 windows. Mainly only use the one windows for work bs that I never want to touch my personal space. I spend most my time on my Linux machine and just use rustdesk though. Having three monitors helps because one is pretty much dedicated to rustdesk.

If you do want windows do this....put windows on a sacrificial drive.... Promise to yourself that there's just garbage in there so it doesn't matter... Install Linux on another drive. Have your computer start from the Linux drive thru grub. Set up grub to recognize the windows drive. No, no matter how hard that bitch ass OS tries to update your godly Linux install, it won't find anything. Fuck you Microsoft! Knowledge is power. Now go out there and compute.

Well, it makes little difference in the end; Windows should keep its grubby fingers out of someone else’s partitions. Whether this be Linux, MacOS or - yes - another Windows installation.

I am forced into using W11 and I can confirm this is true.

You need two separate SSDs. One for Linux, one for Windows.

• Install Linux on SSD-A. Make sure it has an EFI system partition with a bootloader in it (GRUB, systemd-boot, REFInd), don't use an efistub. If the installer is done, disconnect the SSD to be safe.
• Install Windows on SSD-B with the desired updates. It will create its own EFI partition.
  • Optionally, you can create a separate NTFS volume for your C:\Users so you don't have to mount the entire system on Linux if you need to access your files.
• Boot into Windows. Use a tool to completely disable the updates. I use WinUtil by Chris Titus.
• Reconnect SSD-A.
• Boot and enter the firmware configuration. In the boot device list, make sure SSD-A has a much higher priority than SSD-B! You can even remove SSD-B from the bootable devices.
• Boot into Linux. In the bootloader configuration, create an entry that targets the Windows C: volume on SSD-B.
  • Alternatively, you can just use the firmware's boot menu to boot from SSD-B.

Done. If you need to update Windows, physically disconnect SSD-A and boot from SSD-B.

Gnu linux and gonorrhoea windows

Put it in a tiny box and starve that fucker.

I like it.

Everyone saying you need two harddrives needs to know: all you need are 2 efi partitions: one for windows one for linux.. You can have them on the same drive. It's nonstandard, but I have never found a machine where it doesn't work.

Don't use your phone computer for work. Even if you're an independent consultant, S Corp or whatever. Just don't.

For privacy and legal reasons, and your own sanity, just get a separate computer and only ever use that for work.

Most of the time you can write that off anyway.

Might be able to starve it further with Windows 10 Ameliorated. It's got a fancy UI now, but under the hood it's a bunch of Powershell scripts to disable a lot of the bullshit (or at least it used to be).

Using IoT LTSC install media is good too, doesn't include a lot of the BS to begin with.

Until you update your EFI and have forgotten all about the fact that non-Windows EFI boot images need to be registered with the Secure Boot key store even if Secure Boot is off. And that the key store is wiped when updating the EFI.

And then you spend an entire afternoon trying to find out why your Linux boot every isn't even recognized by the EFI anymore. Fun.

Not sure how I managed this but I installed windows long after Linux on my gaming PC (to use a VR headset that was given to me), and somehow it created its own EFI partition without nuking the real one.

It's on a separate hard drive for me, and I have it so I select which drive to continue booting from when I first turn the machine on.

Recently booted Windows to install a BIOS update with a Windows only installer and realised it had been about a year since last boot. Think it may be time to reclaim that space.

You forgot step 2. Throw sacrificial drive into trash.

I'm in school. I 100% need windows for proctored tests. Institutions that offer online schooling are slowly building infrastructure around Microsoft 365 and underlying tech that depends on windows.

I get it. I main Linux too but you 100% need windows in remote learning. So it's dual boot.

Yes! That's the recommended way of doing it! Hammer it first or someone might bring that virus home and try to use it.

I built a computer in 2012 with the idea of having 3 OSes to boot from: Windows 7, Mac OS 10.7 (hackintosh), and CentOS.

I partition the drive into three main parts, and install each OS on one each. Except that I had to do it again, because Windows 7 lost its absolute shit that it wasn't on the first partition. Just threw an absolute shit-fit that it didn't come first.

So I re-do the installations, let Windows be first in the partition order, Mac OS second, CentOS third. The next problem was that I couldn't download any drivers on Windows, because it couldn't recognize the absolutely bog-standard network controller on my motherboard. So I boot into Mac OS X, which (with a couple of quick kext edits) already recognized all of the hardware on the mobo despite none of it being Apple or Apple related, download the drivers for windows, throw them on a FAT partition I set up to exchange data between the OSes, and finally get Windows running in about 4x the time it took to get Mac OS running on the exact same built-for-windows hardware I'd cobbled together.

And of course I fire up CentOS, and it was pretty much, "I got this" right off the bat.

I've been using Windows and Mac OS since the late 80s, and linux since about 1999, and I still have never encountered a more fussy OS than Windows.

Dual booting may be a bad idea. You should run MAS-activated Windows in a VM.

Maybe we should speak to them in a language they actually speak. In this case, I am thinking the proper language is class action lawsuit.

Dumb windows

Nah emphasize sacrificial; you gotta reach in and rip out its beating heart like that one guy from Indiana Jones

There is a joke about Bill Gates hidden somewhere

"If I fits, I sits"

No, slopOS is not a cute cat.

I'm going to call out rEFInd for dual booting, since it doesn't require you to configure anything and finds and recognizes bootable partitions at boot time. Less stuff to mess up, less work when you want to add/remove an OS.

I did not realize the beer McConaughey was drinking in True Detective was a real brand

Product placement matters.

Most mobos usually have a bios flash utility in the bios setup itself, so you don't need to rely on the windows installer. You just need to stick the update on a USB stick (extract the binary file from the zip).

I didn’t do any disconnecting or reconnecting of any drives, just installed Pop on SSD0, Windows on SSD1, and set up three partitions on HDD: one formatted for Linux, one for Windows, and one meant for them to share if I ever need that. Using W10 LTSC IoT tho, so maybe that’s why it behaves better?