windows update

Back when I dual booted, I had the most success keeping Windows on a separate drive completely. After making the Linux drive the primary boot device, GRUB would pick it up and I'd be off to the races. I now just keep a Windows VM -- it's been much easier to deal with.

Boy howdy, you best keep that BitLocker key handy, though.
- I'm not following, do you need the bitlocker key when Linux is on a separate disk? is there something extra you need to keep in mind compared to just running windows?
I was going to dual boot, to kind of test the waters of using Linux as my primary. Then I heard there were is with Windows not wanting to play nice, so now I just run Linux.
And to be honest I don't actually know what any of the issues are, I didn't care enough to even search it. I just said Fuck Windows and moved on with my life.
- That was probably the right move. I had multiple drives, but only one SSD at the time, and I decided to dual boot with both on that SSD. Long story short, Windows fucked it up, I spent a lot of time recovering things, but Windows was never able to be recovered (I did manage to get Linux Bootable again). I decided to grab anything important off that drive and then just turned it fully into a Linux drive, and ditched Windows completely. It's been great since.
Windows is literally designed to break multi-boot setups. Funny enough, multibooting on a Mac was never a big problem. Microsoft has more of a reason to cooperate here and they just can’t help themselves.
- My bet is it's partially on purpose. They think they can keep you on Windows by doing this, but for me it just ensured I go 100% Linux.
I currently dual boot like this. I'm still really new to Linux but I always wondered about this meme since I didn't have to change my boot settings other than to boot the drive with Linux first. Now it makes sense but it had me wondering for a while there!

Setting a BIOS password stops Windows from fucking with most things in your boot partition, I’d open-mouth kiss whomever told me that tip

I told you. Now kiss me (⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠³⁠˘⁠)
- No. It was me.
This info would have been so fucking useful a decade or two ago
you mean that password function actually had a use this whole time?!?
I wish I knew that 20 years ago.

Always keep a backup of your boot partition, when dual booting with windows. I wouldn’t encourage a windows boot though

- "Hello, my name is [redacted] and I'm a recovering dualboot user. It's been...wow, yeah, I'm 27 days sober using only Linux on my machine....You know, it's like they tell you, you think you'll never stop. You think "How could I stop drinking this Win11 slop? My whole life has been like this!" Naw, man. When they tell you that you don't miss the taste, that it will come to disgust you, looking back. They're right. They were all right all alo-" insert meloncolic sobbing for 92 minutes
  "Excuse me...sir? This is a Wendy's."
- Fucking goddamn I'd love to have a replacement to fusion 360 so I never had to touch windows again. FreeCAD is just awful, I keep coming back to it and keeping finding new issues with it. OpenSCAD is cool and useful for simple stuff, but it is not performant in the slightest and the lack of ability to fillet or chamfer edges is insane. Blender is great for 3d modeling but doesn't work well for engineering modeling.
I have dual boot for long time already. Win 11 + Ubuntu. Although there was no any critical issues so far, except some mess up with internet connection on my ubuntu few times.
Or never let Windows touch anything. There are alternatives. Treat Windows like the virus it is.
Any advice for a Steam Deck user that dual boots windows to access games I've paid for but otherwise can't play anymore on Steam Deck?
- Surprised no one answered yet… I don’t have a steam deck, so I don’t know much about it. Are those games from the windows store? If not, you could try to get them working on linux with Lutris (or something similar). Generally I wouldn’t encourage buying DRM-free versions of games if possible (I know sadly that’s not an option for every game)

Windows only in a VM.

That is the only way.

I'm glad I've always kept Windows on a separate disk.

Mine still got fucked.
Don't partition records on one disk affect multiple disks?
- Not if they are on the (encrypted at that) Linux disc & uefi boots to that drive.
On laptop?
- Yep. Depends on your exact laptop if there's space for a second drive. On my old 2011 MacBook pro I uninstalled the CD drive and installed a second SSD. Well, upgrading the HDD to SSD in the first place... THEN a second SSD
- I'm sure laptops with only 1 NVMe slot exist, but you can just not buy them
- Also on laptop, yeah - I only ever had one laptop in my life (a Gemini Celeron for like 300 monies), but it has two drives (both sata iirc).
  \ (I only need it to remote to my servers & maybe some web browsing.)
  I assume this isn't usual?

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.

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.

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

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.
- 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
- Ahhh, so that's why I've never had any issues with my linux first windows 10 second setup.
- 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.
I have genuinely never had this issue while dual booting and I'm very confused as to why
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.

Windows is the virus

Literally the only boot drive issue I've ever had dual booting was when I somehow accidentally deleted the GRUB partition (I'm still not entirely sure how)

Grub lives on the drive with Linux, windows on an extra one, select which I wanna use on boot. Windows just updated like yesterday, rebooted right to GRUB no issue

User reports having lost his GRUB partition mysteriously
User says not to worry about Windows randomly removing GRUB partitions through Windows Updates
- It was me, I know that, and I know I did it while in Linux, too, I just did like 50 things at once and about 20 of them could be responsible

Just stop dual booting. This is self-inflicted harm. Setup a VM or find a native workaround.

What the heck is the origin of this meme template? And am I the only one who thought this was Roger Stone?

It's a spinnoff of the dancing prince Charles meme.

Why Windows?! WHY??

Because in their eyes nothing else compares. nothing else in necessary. so why keep it? And we all know windows needs that 35Gb diskspace really desperate (for reasons)
Microsoft - A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm
Microsoft will keep stifling competition "until the regulators have their foot on their neck," argues Cal Berkeley professor

man this meme is als old as windows 7 or has been recreated in exact this form over and over again, i am not sure witch of those

I posted this here last year.
- i have a phantom memory of making this meme when linux memes was still on reddit, maybe i copied the concept or it was just zeitgeist idk
Sadly, it remains relevant.

I know this one weird trick to avoid this..

that's why i just deleted my entire hard drive and installed mint on the whole thing

Put Windows and Linux on two separate physical drives and this will never happen

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
To my own surprise, it can happen.
on two separate physical ~~drives~~ Computers and this will never happen
Password protecting "bios" usually works if you must dual-boot tho.

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

Variations of this meme get posted every week, but I've never experienced it, despite having had tens of grub updates murder-suicide the Windows boot loader and grub itself across five or six different machines. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to rebuild a Windows boot partition, but the frequency that I'm hit with this problem is one of the major reasons I avoid using Linux. Eventually I'm going to have to switch, but that's driven mainly by Windows getting worse rather than any of the pain points I've had when trying to switch full time in the past having been fixed.

windows removed my grub bootloader at least 3 times even once after i started using seperate drives.
ive never had the opposite happen.
Why do you not avoid using Windows instead?
- Not him but I use Windows for C++ and C# development, and I use Linux for coding work stuff (mostly javascript). Have yet to find a good, free IDE for C++ development on Linux that compares to Visual Studio
I think I literally just had it happen again, not even because of windows update but by having windows "delete" a partition that I wanted to reclaim on my Linux install (in the process of moving Linux and windows to completely separate drives)

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.

I actually had a Linux update do this once when it updated grub. Took a bit to fix but nothing was lost.

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

I literally had the same thing happen to me last week. I'm done with windows. Hello ubuntu

Imagine dual booting in 2025.

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.
- Which mod tho
- Depending whether you have a gpu in your cpu I think you can easily do a pass through for your dgpu and just virtualize windows.

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.

Well, one permanent solution is to permanently ditch Windows
Would mounting the drive and running windows in a virtual machine work?

Has never happened to me since using systemd-boot

Heh. systemd-boot's Windows entry broke for me over a year ago, and I haven't been able to fix it. I have to boot Windows through UEFI.

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

I don't even boot windows anymore and it still takes over the first boot spot randomly.

I'd use a VM with GPU passthru

This is what I've been trying to accomplish. While I've been able to get it to work; I generally have relatively poor performance for gaming.
By chance do you game and have had enough success with the GPU pass through to play? What's your setup like?
- My comment was more like a suggestion, I don't actually use Windows at all anymore since I finished school and thankfully I don't need it
- I used to GPU passthrough a 7900 xtx. Just pass through the whole PCIE device and don't try to partition it or any fancy stuff. All that likely won't work unless you have specific workstation cards, anyways. Just pass it through so the VM gets all of the gpu. Then, the only performance issues should come only from any tomfoolery with CPU settings or other performance settings like not having all the hardware virtualization hooks turned on.
  Though fair warning: I had lots of odd issues, like the GPU not soft-resetting after crashes, and not being able to soft-reboot the VM. Because the commercial drives often do not have all of the power states and driver hooks necessary to totally reboot/etc while staying powered and attached to a bus.

Get rid of the wheel and this is the most accurate meme. Windows update is an old man who falls and breaks his hip. Linux is a cripple in a broken wheelchair. 100% true.

Wow, what a poet.
Slurs feel so forced these days
- I mean, us cripples aren't all united in it being a slur.
  To the contrary, there's a growing number that embrace it because it doesn't downplay how serious many disabilities can be.
- I mean, us cripples aren't all united in it being a slur.
  To the contrary, there's a growing number that embrace it because it doesn't downplay how serious many disabilities can be.

General Reposti

Darth Stealious

Zero effort the Hutt

Mother Stealzin

Spamdo Calrisian

Stoleman Trebor

Stole Koon

Jango Theft

Commander Copy

Reposter Rex

Darth Plagiarism the Unwise

Clone Trooper

Abscond Jinn

Duplikit fisto

Ki Fraudi Mundi

Steal Koth

Master Stealfo dyas

Anakin Stealwalker

Count Twoku

Master Olda

Mace Winduplicate

General Thievous

Count Dooplicate

Scam Weasel

Robmé Amidala

Poggle the snatcher

C-3repost

Loot Gunray

Repost Tano

Barris Copy

Kit Reposto

Shaak Thief

Basteela Shan

Ima Gun Duplicate

Han Stolo

Grand moff taken

Captain Steeli

Stealer Geerera

Bodhi Took

Jabba the thug

Luke, did I ever tell you about Reposter Tano?

Ah the repostiator is here

I find your lack of OC disturbing.

You can't stop the reposts, anymore than you can stop the suns from setting.

So this is how OC dies - with thunderous applause. Reposts! Unlimited reposts!

The Reposter took everything from me. Ripped me from my source, murdered my original poster, used me as a karma coe, and then cast me aside. Abandoned me. Once, I had originality — now I have nothing.

I am no OC.

If you define yourself by your power to shitpost, your desire to karmawhore, to possess, then you have nothing.

The garbage’ll do! (No need to alter that one, I guess.)

You know, no matter how funny you are, I’ve always hated watching you be reposted.

A prequelmeme to be sure, but a reposted one!

General Thievous... You're older than I expected

Your clones are not that impressive, you must be very ashamed.

Watch those wrist reposts

Are we blind, deploy the downvotes

Oh no the reposter

A repost to be sure and an unwelcome one

Guess I was wrong, there was no OC at all

Master, reposters

I don’t like reposts, they're rough, coarse, irritating and they get everywhere

now THiS is reposting

You'll try reposting that’s a bad trick

This is where the repost begins

We will watch your repost with no interest

I will deal with this repost slime myself

I don’t think the OC works

Henceforth, you shall be known as Ctrl+Vader!

The ability to post does not make you original

Only a sith deals in reposts

It’s over OP, I have the high karma

You were supposed to destroy the reposters not join them!

What about the repost attack on the OC?

My powers have doubled since the last time I saw this post OP

You are on this subreddit, but we don’t give you the rank of OC

Fool, I have been trained in repost identification arts by Count Dooku

I downvoted them all, they're dead, every single one of them. And not just the reposts, but the shit posts and the OC too. They're reposts, so I downvoted them like reposts. I hate them!

You ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagiarism the unwise, I though not, it’s not a story the mods would tell you. It’s a reddit legend. Darth plagiarism was a dark lord of reposting. So dumb and so unoriginal, he would use the sort by hot to find good posts and create reposts. He had such low knowledge of posting he couldn’t even keep the karma he loved from dying. The dark side of reposting is the path to many disabilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so weak, the only thing he was still afraid of loosing was his reposts, which eventually of course he didn’t. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice reposted his post. Ironic, he couldn’t keep others karma from dying, not even his own

You have failed me, OP.

The repost is strong with this one.

If one is to understand the great OC. One must create it and all of its aspects. Not just the dogmatic narrow low effort of the reposts.

The oppression of the repost will never return! Your plot to regain control of the Subreddit has failed! It's over! You have lost!

How many other posts have I seen reposted by this Subreddit?!

You've already stolen the OC... This is just a repost!

Reposting is not the Jedi way.

You are no OC creator.

We got Reposts!

Good redditors, create OC

OP. You're crazy reposting a meme is not OC.

Reposters, take 'em down!

They've sent in the Reposters!

Reposters. Dead ahead.

Just like the other post.

Your arrogance blinds you, Master Reposter.

You are weak and unwise, and I am very ashamed of you, Reposter.

Unfortunately for you, your karma will not be seen that way.

Set 'em up, and vote 'em down!

The Repost Menace

Attack of the Reposts

The Repost Wars

Revenge of the Repost

Rogue Two: A Repost Story

Reposto: A Repost Story

Star Wars: Reposters

A New Repost

The Repost Strikes Back

Return Of The Post

The Grabalorian

The Repost Awakens

The Last Repost

The Rise of Repost

I am getting the impression you have seen this meme somewhere before and are upset about it. Have you considered maybe this is a you issue? And, that some of us are seeing this for the first time?
- their message is a repost as well, they didnt even bother to remove reddit reference, probably didnt even read it lol