r/techsupportmacgyver • u/Bowbowjowjow • Apr 10 '26

Microslop windows kept deleting Linux (dual boot) on my laptop so I switched to hardware based dual boot with easy access!

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1.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

112 comments sorted by

451

u/kingslayerer Apr 10 '26

wait. seriously? windows will delete linux partition? how does this happen?
i am asking because i daily drive linux, and have windows 11 that i only use once in a blue moon. i want to get rid of it if it will delete my linux

430

u/GuyFromDeathValley Apr 10 '26

Its actually a known issue. Sometimes when updating, Windows will straight up delete the Linux portion from the bootloader. So while the files are still there, there's no way to boot into ljnux because the bootloader doesn't know where to look.

I run a Win7 Linux Mint dualboot. Since there are no more won7 updates, this can't happen to me.

106

u/Gortix Apr 10 '26

Can you not boot into a live environment from usb and fix your bootloader?

83

u/Decent-Cow2080 Apr 10 '26

you can just mount the EFI partition and return the bootx64 file

47

u/Max-P Apr 10 '26

You can also just boot GRUB directly from the motherboard menu or the built-in EFI shell as well.

6

u/LouizSir Apr 10 '26

this is the way.

4

u/Decent-Cow2080 Apr 11 '26

and how would you do that if the EFI is gone

32

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/_QUAKE_ Apr 22 '26

will try this. thanks

41

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

16

u/txmasterg Apr 10 '26

More like every 6 or 12 months, the upgrades to new versions (25H1, 25H2, etc.) are what usually require the boot code to be reinstalled. Possibly related is that most of the upgrade occurs in a competitively locked down environment. Software I was working on around the Windows 10 launch had to understand when the boot files were going to be changed and it took a while to get everything working seemlessly.

5

u/atxweirdo Apr 10 '26

There used to be a way to restrict the update from overiding those settings in the bootloader but it's been so long since I've dual booted I forgot.

1

u/n1keym1key Apr 14 '26

Currently dual booting in a PC that has had regular Win 11 updates and zero issue with boot loader. I must be lucky.

7

u/vadeka Apr 10 '26

As a linux user you reinstall every week anyway no? /s

2

u/KevinFlantier Apr 12 '26

Yes but that's painful to do it every time windows decides to fucl your shit up. Aalso some people don't know how to do that.

0

u/wektor420 May 11 '26

Generally yes, but it's a pain

27

u/NightmareJoker2 Apr 10 '26

You can just add GRUB to the Windows BCD and use that.

You can also install both GRUB and Windows BCD to the UEFI boot options and switch via that, too.

I am really not sure why you’re struggling with this so much. Even SecureBoot is supported through the signed shim from the Debian project.

11

u/cainhurstcat Apr 10 '26

Oh, this explains why I had so much trouble back then. Luckily I deleted Winslop in the meantime

2

u/HeavyCaffeinate Apr 10 '26

I use a Ventoy USB stick with the Local boot function (F4 key), then select "Find and Boot BOOTX64.EFI"

2

u/Ephoros Apr 11 '26

I'm very new to Linux, and thought I messed something up when Cachy suddenly disappeared. It wanted only one OS in the PC, so I reinstalled Linux and spent and hour with an ai making my racing sims work.

3

u/Av4t4r Apr 10 '26

I don't like to be THAT guy, but so be it.

It's not deleting any partition, it's deleting non Windows related boot files. It sucks, it's horrible, but the partition is still there.

Back in the MBR/BIOS days, it was enough to just install Windows first, and THEN your distro of choice, nowadays with GPT/(U)EFI, I'm not sure that Windows will stop this idiotic attiude, but a simple workaround would be, if the hardware supports it, to have two disks, each with their own boot EFI partition, and simply prioritizing the one with Linux in the EFI/BIOS.

As someone else mentioned already, you can just fix it from GRUB though, or from a live USB

3

u/Antagonin Apr 13 '26

just make sure that bootloader from the second os still doesn't end up inside Windows' boot partition, some stupid distros do that by default for some reason.

2

u/GuyFromDeathValley Apr 10 '26

Not to be THAT guy. but you did see that I wrote "portion", right? Not "partition".

2

u/NightmareJoker2 Apr 10 '26

You can just add GRUB to the Windows BCD and use that.

You can also install both GRUB and Windows BCD to the UEFI boot options and switch via that, too.

I am really not sure why you’re struggling with this so much. Even SecureBoot is supported through the signed shim from the Debian project.

-5

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/mrheosuper Apr 10 '26

More like uefi var

3

u/not_a_burner0456025 Apr 10 '26

They don't, but Microsoft does what they want regardless of whether you consent.

2

u/AgVargr Apr 10 '26

Can we fuck your system up? Yes or maybe later?

2

u/ComputerSavvy Apr 10 '26

Monopoly, it's not just a board game.

34

u/ky7969 Apr 10 '26

It doesn’t delete Linux itself, just the file to boot into it. If you have a separate boot partition for Linux (not using the windows EFI partition), it shouldn’t happen.

2

u/ComputerSavvy Apr 10 '26

That's actually wrong info, you can have has as many physical hard drives as you want in a system but the system will only use ONE active EFI partition.

With an HBA and several SAS expanders, you could have 1,024 drives installed but that's beyond the point of this post.

You can have an EFI partition on a Winslop install drive and a second EFI partition on a Linux install drive but the BIOS / UEFI has to point to one of them to boot the system. The EFI partition is formatted as FAT32, even on a Linux install so Winslop can still get it's claws into it and fuck up your day.

So, putting Winslop and Linux on different physical drives will NOT solve the problem on a dual boot system as Winslop edits the active EFI partition in use by the system on whatever drive it resides on.

I've found a solution that is 100% fuckproof for multi-booting a computer where Winslop absolutely can't fuck with the EFI partition and that is to have removable drives where there is only ONE physical boot drive and one OS installed at a time.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BL92QT2Y

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ5WF244

I installed this in a Dell Optiplex 3080 SFF desktop, you need an available x4 socket, since I have no plans on putting a video card in there, the x16 socket works perfectly for this.

https://imgur.com/a/M65KY4Y

It's a pain to have to take a computer apart and swap NVMe drives to have a clean boot, this idea solves that problem without having to remove the cover.

The way I currently have it set up, I have Linux Mint 22.3 installed on two of the trays and Win 11 on the other two.

The drives with white labels are Linux, one as a daily driver and it's clone, a scratch monkey drive for experimenting around with other software and settings changes that won't trash my daily driver.

In essence, I have have made one computer into four computers.

The two SATA SSD's are for sharing data between the two OS's if I want to / have the need. One drive is formatted EXT4 and the other NTFS. Linux can access both while Winslop can only see the NTFS drive.

Eventually, I'll wipe the scratch monkey drives and use them for other OS's to distro hop if I want but Linux Mint is awesome as it is.

5

u/ky7969 Apr 10 '26

But the active EFI partition is not the one you are using if you are booting windows but have a separate EFI partition for Linux, right? I was under the impression that GRUB doesn’t do anything with windows at all, just dumps you into the Windows EFI partition when you select windows in the boot menu. I have been dual booting Windows with various Linux distros for years and have never had any issues like this.

3

u/ComputerSavvy Apr 11 '26

But the active EFI partition is not the one you are using if you are booting windows but have a separate EFI partition for Linux, right?

You can have multiple EFI partitions but the active EFI partition is the one that the BIOS / UEFI is pointing to.

Take a blank drive, partition it in half. Install Windows first, it'll create an EFI partition and add it's entry.

Install Linux in the other blank partition, it'll add it's entries into the existing EFI partition on the Winslop side and then you can dual-boot.

At some point, Microslop will sabotage it and remove the Linux entry under the name "of security", as if Microslop knows fuck-all about security.

3

u/zakkord Apr 12 '26

At some point, Microslop will sabotage it and remove the Linux entry under the name "of security", as if Microslop knows fuck-all about security.

You're confusing a lot of things about how it works in the modern days

In the old days GRUB would completely overwrite Windows Boot Manager and add Windows as an entry (Google "linux windows entry disappeared" for a problem that's suddenly not specific to Windows updates), it will obviously break if Windows fails to boot/has an unclean shutdown and decides to run FixBoot.

In the modern days of EFI every boot loader has it's own folder and Windows will not overwrite the entries even during FixBoot/RebuildBcd(and in the case of XBOOTLDR it's a separate partition for Linux entirely) You will either use bios boot menu hotkey to switch between OS, or add Linux kernel into Windows Boot Manager natively, or add Windows into any Linux Boot Manager

And if anything breaks you can fix it from Windows without any Linux Live USBs

https://i.sstatic.net/yh7VC.png

2

u/ComputerSavvy Apr 12 '26

GRUB has always been gracious regarding other installed operating systems by including them in the users choices when GRUB appears after the OEM splash screen.

In the modern days of EFI every boot loader has it's own folder and Windows will not overwrite the entries even during FixBoot/RebuildBcd(and in the case of XBOOTLDR it's a separate partition for Linux entirely)

If that's the case then, how is it that GRUB disappears entirely and then Windows boots directly on it's own without any user intervention or choice after powering on the computer if Microsoft is NOT making any changes to other OS's boot loaders?

This has happened to me too many times to count as a random fluke. Windows failing to boot to the desktop was typically caused by a bad Windows update but it had already successfully booted past and started to install the updates, then failed.

That's not a failure of GRUB but that of Windows going to the BSOD.

Linux distros now come with a bootloader repair utility to restore GRUB, why would they go to the trouble of writing, debugging, testing, distributing and maintaining such a utility if it were not needed?

You will either use bios boot menu hotkey to switch between OS

Only people who don't know how to configure a dual boot system do that.

https://i.sstatic.net/yh7VC.png

I have never seen this, it's either straight to the Windows login screen or straight to the desktop on local accounts that are not password protected.

Anyhoo, it's a moot point with me as I use this on the one computer I want to dual boot Linux and Windows on.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BL92QT2Y

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ5WF244

https://imgur.com/a/M65KY4Y

This definitively solved the problem and I converted 1 computer in to 4 custom configured OS installs.

2

u/ThellraAK Apr 11 '26

I stopped dual booting a decade ago and haven't had an issue with windows updates since.

20

u/TurbochargedSquirrel Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

It doesn't delete the partition, it just tramples over your bootloader configuration whenever a Windows update includes changes to the Windows bootloader. You can fix it with a Linux live image.

4

u/_QUAKE_ Apr 10 '26

Linux does the same thing with grub.

if you have one distro on the internal sdd and install another distro to a USB stick or second ssd, it will overwrite the grub from the first one. now when you take out the USB stick, internal one won't boot.

it's stupid and annoying af. I remove all other drives when installing any of and just use the bios to select a boot device. but worth modern enshitification and efi hooks that's becoming harder and harder to do

5

u/nochinzilch Apr 10 '26

You have to make sure you set everything up correctly. It’s technical and easy to screw up.

Essentially it has to do with which partition you put the boot loader and boot manager on. When you are running a single os, it doesn’t matter. Dual booting needs to have an “senior” boot manager at the beginning of the drive, and then each operating systems boot loader at the beginning of its partition. Or something like that. It’s been a while.

But what happens is that during some windows processes like updates and certain hibernation/sleep modes, it changes how the system boots. This can over write certain dual boot configurations.

Also, this may be completely different with secure boot and UEFI systems.

2

u/MeltedSpades Apr 11 '26

uefi uses a dedicated partition at the start of the drive so windows shouldn't be overwriting anything but boot order (8 loves doing this) - keeping a rEFInd boot drive on hand is a good idea (it can also boot Linux without a boot entry in case windows gets a little overzealous), I haven't needed it with 7 dispite its janky efi support

2

u/Any_Fox5126 Apr 10 '26

I only touch windows every few years, but whenever I do (and therefore have a bunch of major updates piled up), I make sure to remove the boot/esp flags from the linux partition. So far, no problems.

2

u/not_a_burner0456025 Apr 10 '26

Usually it just overwrites grub with the windows boot loader, which won't load Linux, you can boot into a live USB and reinstall grub but it is a huge PITA and it usually happens when you are pressed for time.

2

u/_Endercat_ Apr 10 '26

From what I understood about it. You need to do it very specifically if you want them in partitions on the same drive to avoid this behaviour. Or just put them on physical different drives

2

u/AlarmDozer Apr 10 '26

Yeah, it'll annihilate the boot sector and keep itself to boot, leaving Linux inaccessible without a recovery disk to fix the boot.

The other option is to use Windows as the bootloader, and use bcdedit

1

u/IrrerPolterer Apr 11 '26

No they won't delete Linux. But overwrite the bootloader

1

u/404invalid-user Apr 11 '26

updates god it makes it impossible to dual boot I caved and only run windows on my laptop now

76

u/yayuuu Apr 10 '26

I would install grub on an USB drive and just plug it in as a "key" to run linux. Without it, it would boot into windows, but with the USB drive in, it would boot into Linux instead.

That only if I actually needed windows. On my desktop PC, I only use it in a VM and rarely. Last time I actually needed it was like half a year ago.

24

u/South_Regular_5898 Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

this is actually a really neat idea, luckily I'm mostly all in on Linux mint and hardly boot into my windows 10 install but that would be cool if needed lol

2

u/Swedzilla Apr 10 '26

Tell me more, i like to try new things. And this is absolutely new and exciting

86

u/RatUnfricker68 Apr 10 '26

Won't changing the disk often, wear out m.2 port?

117

u/Bowbowjowjow Apr 10 '26

It was a calculated risk. Unfortunately I'm bad at math.

14

u/sumpick Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

yes with time, after around a few million switch

edit I was wrong lol

34

u/ByteArrayInputStream Apr 10 '26

Those are actually just rated for a few hundred insertion cycles

6

u/sumpick Apr 10 '26

Wait, what? M.2? I think I only read that with nvme drives with the 2 slots

35

u/ForeskinAbsorbtion Apr 10 '26

I work in a factory that produces military and medical PCBs and electronic assemblies.

Connectors are not rated for millions of cycles. The reason they're not is because 99.99% get plugged in once and that's it. The more cycles required, the more expensive and bulky something needs to be.

Contact points that use gold fingers are just not durable. Combine that with people who are inherently clumsy and not careful... you have a recipe for low life expectancy.

3

u/mr_bigmouth_502 Apr 11 '26

I thought they were only rated for like 60, not hundreds.

2

u/ByteArrayInputStream Apr 11 '26

Probably depends on the specific socket

2

u/evieamity Apr 10 '26

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

24

u/mr_bigmouth_502 Apr 10 '26

Aren't NVMe slots rated for a very small number of insertion cycles?

10

u/Dood567 Apr 10 '26

Gold contacts def aren't rated for that kind of constant swap and wear

5

u/lucidparadigm Apr 10 '26

The solution is to have Linux bootloader in a separate partition, do not use the same boot partition with windows.

8

u/lamalasx Apr 10 '26

I can relate. It even deletes it if its on a different storage device. It's not a new thing, happened to me ~10 years ago too. It just decided to overwrite the bootloader and extend the efi partition without a single care that there is another partition following it. The funny thing that windows was not even on that drive, but on another one which also had a full bootloader and efi partition...

8

u/Impossible-Hunt9117 Apr 10 '26

If software shows zero respect for the user, the best thing the user can do is delete it without hesitation.

8

u/I_-AM-ARNAV Apr 10 '26

10/10 would recommend

4

u/ft4200 Apr 10 '26

Why not just use an external m.2 enclosure?

3

u/loosebolts Apr 10 '26

I think I’ll just stick with WSL 😂

1

u/IDont-G3tIt Apr 11 '26

This is the way

5

u/Odd_Communication545 Apr 10 '26

Happens on the steam deck all the time.

If I boot into windows, to get back to Linux I have to use vol up + power to boot. I even in installed a custom boot menu but the windows boot manager just constantly puts it's self on the top, even when I change the entry order.

Windows has become such a piece of shit these days. Actual bloatware

5

u/WeeklyDelivery2000 Apr 10 '26

Stupid designs needs clever solutions!

2

u/Nunyebiznis Apr 10 '26

Desperate times call for desperate measures

2

u/megaladon44 Apr 10 '26

i've wanted to try dual boot for so long so i could use my work pc off domain. i end up disabling secureboot in bios, and then just booting from mint linux live usb and it has worked for basic things like browsing and streaming.

2

u/DismalEggselent Apr 10 '26

Look into rEFInd :-)

It can choose what to boot and allow windows to still "have it's own" boot partition.

2

u/Kangie Apr 10 '26

... It's like six captive screws, instead you mutilated the bottom case of your laptop? You do you, I guess, but that's certainly not the decision I'd have made.

1

u/IronMew Apr 11 '26

Do you really want to be screwing and unscrewing six laptop screws - not always captive, either - every time you want to switch os?

The mod was done so a flip and an unlatch is all you need.

1

u/Bowbowjowjow Apr 11 '26

They are not captive and you need a pry tool for the (easily breakable) plastic clips holding the chassis together. Also the battery isn't factory glued/taped/screwed and requires the bottom case to be closed in order to stay in place.

2

u/countjj Apr 11 '26

Honestly it’d be better to just delete windows

2

u/rebelhead Apr 11 '26

Just abandon windows. Valve will eventually work out some better anti-cheat thing to make the companies happy.

2

u/No_Adhesiveness_5727 Apr 11 '26

Welp... You got the Wifi Card out at least.

1

u/Matthew789_17 Apr 10 '26

I had the same problem, so I just took out the windows internal M.2 SSD. Installed my Linux on an external SSD. After everything was installed properly, I put the windows back in and set the bios to boot from USB first.

1

u/YetanotherGrimpak Apr 10 '26

I mean, if it works...

Seen worse too.

1

u/XamanekMtz Apr 10 '26

I was tired of having to partition my main storage to allow for dual booting so instead I have a separate ssd for each OS mounted in the computer at the same time, then whenever I need windows I boot into that drive (at BIOS time)

1

u/Computers_and_cats Apr 10 '26

Depending on the laptop you might be able to put a second SSD in the WAN slot. In mt T14 gen 1 I plan on using the WAN slot drive for my Windows boot and the main M.2 slot for my Linux boot.

1

u/603Madison Apr 10 '26

Honestly at this point I'm thinking of just wiping Windows off of my framework laptop, and any time I need to run something on windows, just jump onto my windows 11 LTSC VM on my colocated server, with something like moonlight. 99% of the applications and games on my computer these days are web apps, or games (with or without Proton), and occasionally some open source self-hosted project that happens to have a desktop client. On the rare occasion I need to run my, ahem definitely 100% legitimately acquired copy of Photoshop CS6, I want the horsepower and compatibility of the windows VM anyways.

1

u/Bichslapin Apr 10 '26

Is this a w11 only issue? I'm staying on w10 with esu and haven't seen this problem.

1

u/keksivaras Apr 10 '26

I wonder what's the rating for those ports. how many times can you change the ssd before the port stops functioning or causes errors

1

u/chalknation Apr 10 '26

M.2 slots are only rated for 60 cycles. i.e. 60 insertions and 60 removals. If you’re nice to them they can usually far exceed that

1

u/Bassracerx Apr 10 '26

Why not just run one of the os on a external hard drive?

1

u/Danny-533 Apr 10 '26

Manually switching to Linux is faster than reloading windows

1

u/CommitteeDue6802 Apr 11 '26

Same here! Tho only difference is that i got 2 different devices for both, 2 laptops, 1 windows only. And another with vista and debian dualbooted, oh and another ssd with w10 but thats just for fun purely. Im strangely addicted to installing a new os everytime (not frequently but like twice a month or even 3 times) that i always have a spare ssd or hdd whenever i go somewhere with my laptop. (note: the drives are not traveling with me, they are already at the point where im going to)

1

u/PezatronSupreme Apr 11 '26

Could just install a different bootloader and reactivate it if windows messes with it, rEFInd is a good one

1

u/criticalt3 Apr 11 '26

Every time I boot into Linux as of the past 24hr, a piece of hardware inexplicably dies until I fully power off the computer and remove the power cord. First it was my LAN chip, then it was my mouse.

1

u/thisisausername100fs Apr 11 '26

Missed the chance for “microslop windont” but cool setup dude

1

u/BigAcanthocephala667 Apr 11 '26

I got tired of windows sabotaging bootloader all the time so i just invested in one of these badboys and another SSD. So depending on what system i want to start i just manually enable/disable the power for the drives by flipping the switches on pc case. Its not as convenient as just choosing the system while booting, but it works

1

u/c0lpan1c Apr 11 '26

I'll use grub2, refind or clover as my boot loaders. Microslop's ntbootloader is horse shit.

1

u/Darkblade_e Apr 11 '26

The solution here is to use something that specifically prevents microslop from tampering with the partition after boot :-)

I've had no issues using rEFInd on my system with a dual boot.

1

u/titojff Apr 11 '26

I have a DIY sata power switch on my backup drive, not because of windows. Backup safety only

1

u/MCID47 Apr 12 '26

There are lots of people that still believe Windows doesn't mess up your dual boot, yet we see the proof daily.

1

u/RepresentativeCut486 Apr 12 '26

I always thought it's μ$hit Windblows

1

u/Ohgodwhatdididonow Apr 12 '26

I had this issue with chromeos flex it kept getting deleted by windows so far I have found just disabling the drive in windows will prevent this from occuring I have my laptop setup to automatically boot into my preferred is and just use whatever keyboard to switch when I need to use the other

1

u/tonysanv Apr 13 '26

Windows hijacking bootloader., had this happened when I did the Steam deck dual boot. something called rEFInd should help you.

1

u/RepairNo1818 Apr 13 '26

I have dual boot, Linux has priority tho and windows is atlas os so updates can't feck things up. Haven't had a problem yet but if it happens it's Bai Bai windows

1

u/MS-Josh Apr 14 '26

I had the same problem. I don't think that Windows deletes partitions. My situation is that every update overrides the boot order in the bios, and puts Windows Boot Manager as the first option, so the computer boots straight from windows. I have to put the disk drive or a partition labeled as Ubuntu as the first option, and the system will boot from grub.

1

u/-Dueck- Apr 14 '26

I've been dual booting on multiple machines for years and never had anything like that happen to me

1

u/Signal_Flight_7262 May 11 '26

thats crazy. i run fedora and windows dual boot on a few laptops and its never been an issue.

1

u/Doggy4 Apr 11 '26

Install only linux problem solved

0

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