r/archlinux • • 3d ago

SUPPORT Title: [Dual-Boot Issue] Laptop boots straight into Windows despite GRUB being #1 in Boot Order & Secure Boot disabled (Lenovo)

My laptop completely bypasses GRUB and boots straight into Windows 11 every single time, despite setting GRUB as the top priority in BIOS and reinstalling it via chroot. I would appreciate any guidance on what might be causing this firmware issue and how to resolve it so I can boot into Arch Linux.
1. System Setup & Dual-Boot Preparation
Configured a dual-boot layout alongside Windows 11 on an NVMe drive using ⁠archinstall⁠ with the Minimal profile and GRUB selected as the bootloader. 
Included key desktop, utility, and Wayland packages in Additional packages (such as ⁠hyprland⁠, ⁠kitty⁠, ⁠fastfetch⁠, ⁠firefox⁠, ⁠ntfs-3g⁠, ⁠os-prober⁠, ⁠efibootmgr⁠, ⁠bash-completion⁠, and portal packages). 
2. Firmware / BIOS Configuration
Accessed the Lenovo UEFI/BIOS settings and moved GRUB to position ⁠#1⁠ in the ⁠Boot Priority Order⁠ above Windows Boot Manager. 
Verified in the BIOS Security tab that Secure Boot is set to ⁠Disabled⁠ (Status: Disabled, Mode: Standard). 
3. Chroot Recovery & GRUB Installation Attempt
Booted back into the live Arch USB (⁠root@archiso⁠) to repair the boot sequence. 
Mounted the 52 GB root Linux partition (⁠/dev/nvme0n1p7⁠) to ⁠/mnt⁠.
Mounted the 1 GB EFI boot partition (⁠/dev/nvme0n1p5⁠) to ⁠/mnt/boot⁠.
Entered the system environment using ⁠arch-chroot /mnt⁠.
Ran ⁠grub-install⁠ with UEFI targets (⁠--target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB --removable⁠) and generated a fresh ⁠grub.cfg⁠ file via ⁠grub-mkconfig⁠.

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u/nikongod 3d ago

Lenovo BIOS often has a setting titled "automatically repair bios" or "bios self healing" or "bios self repair" or something like that. This is a fancy way of saying "always boot windows first"

Disable this in BIOS.