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Dual Booting (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by remotedev@lemmy.ca to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip

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I'm going nuts here. I hope dual boot questions are ok here.

For backstory, I was dual booting windows 10 and linux mint. Things were fine, until I think when windows was trying to update and on a restart it went to linux, and afterwards I wasn't able to boot up windows. I tried repairing windows with a usb but that was giving me hell about drivers, so I just wiped that hdd and installed windows fresh. Worked fine, got to play a game on there which was why I wanted to get back on windows, lol, all good.

UNTIL, I try to boot back to linux. Getting the grub screen, everything I'm seeing online about setting root to the harddrive where grub is was not working. Back to my tried and true method of wiping it all and starting fresh. I wipe it, get a new linux usb iso, boot into it, install linux, it says to remove media and hit enter to continue. I do that. reboot, get this zoomed in grub window where I can't type at all.

So I'm on windows, trying to hope someone here has had this happen before and knows what I'm missing or what I did wrong because this is really making me crazy.

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[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

First off, how old is your hardware? Are you using EFI or MBR when booting? To check that, go into your "bios" setup on the motherboard and see if CSM (compatability support module) is enabled - if so, it may be best to have that disabled and go full EFI. This will save you a lot of headaches with the multiboot menagerie.

Second, are you using two disk drives? Or are you using multiple partitions on the same disk? The best way (read: least likely to muck up) is to have Windows and Linux on separate drives, with the only shared partition being the EFI Boot partition (which is fine and intentional).

To use EFI boot, your disks need to be GPT formatted.

Install Windows 10 first, then install Mint. If done right, you can switch which OS you want to boot in your 'bios' or firmware setup should Windows assert dominance again. Mint's boot loader should detect the Windows bootloader and boot Windows if chosen as well.

[–] remotedev@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I did do separate drives this time hoping to avoid what happened before. I believe I'm using EFI but I'll double check and check the CSM is enabled. Thanks

[–] remotedev@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I messed with the CSM settings, and then didn't see the disk with Linux at all to boot lmao. After awhile it did show up again, still to the broken grub screen where I can't type. I feel like I'm stuck with windows for the time being

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You may have to enable Legacy USB support to get the bootloader working. To clarify, Mint showed up with CSM Enabled or Disabled? If it showed up when Enabled, you may have inadvertently installed Mint using MBR / BIOS method instead of GPT / UEFI method. You will want to rectify that by redoing Mint install disk and the install as a GPT/UEFI setup. CSM should be Disabled.