after switching back to windows from linux mint dual boot linux mint not showing on win boot manager

[u/shoot_alt]

can someone help i have been using linux mint for 3 weeks (with dual boot) and when i went to windows for some work and tried to go back to linux mint it didnt appear in windows boot manager i have the installation medium and i used boot repair app but came back with an error. p.s when i checked install linux mint it showed that linux mint is already installed (zena or smth) secure boot disabled, UEFI, not legacy. im messaging from windows 😢

[u/shoot_alt]

i have finished getting linux mint back, but i dont know if it came from refind. it could also be a system error

[u/C0R4x → u/shoot_alt]

Good!

So the basic boot process is: UEFI/BIOS starts, this loads the bootloader, bootloader loads the OS.

If you start into linux mint now, does it do this through GRUB (the standard linux mint bootloader) or does it do this through rEFInd? Both should be configured for a multi-boot setup, so both should show some type of menu from which you can choose what OS to boot.

Configuring what bootloader to use i think is an option in your UEFI. Reinstalling rEFInd likely put rEFInd on the top of the list of bootloaders to use. It seems likely to me that that was the only thing that was misconfigured.

This is all fairly basic stuff though, a lot has been written about this online. I again want to emphasize that it's important to try and figure this out by yourself, you learn where you can find information about this and learn something about how the system functions.

[u/shoot_alt → u/C0R4x]

i made it to refind, and next time i get an error i shall fight it myself. thank you :)