Never mind that, Windows 10 did an update a couple of days ago, and now my dual boot screen has gone. I literally can't start my Linux Mint anymore, it boots straight to Windows :(

There is a way to get it back with the command line, but my computer nerd days are over.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/911963/dual-boot-with-windows-10-broken-after-update

I'm assuming that command needs to be edited to whatever my setup is, I have no idea.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Windows might have changed the boot order in your bios, so just go into your bios and check if the mint partition is set to boot first

[–] nixcamic 6 points 5 months ago

Yeah with EFI the days of Windows completely overwriting your Linux bootloader are mostly over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I have no idea how to do this, but I'll keep looking for a tutorial. Luckily I only use my Linux for storing my music. I wish I could have got my art software to work on Linux, they just don't seem to want to cooperate. My WiFi adaptor also only wants to work about half the time, too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Just spam del or f2 keys when you are turning your PC on (or check your motherboards/laptops manual for which key it is) that should put you into your bios and there check the boot options/order.

Tho you can also enter the bios through windows, can just search windows 10 enter bios and that should give you the answers

[–] dejected_warp_core 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

spam del or f2 keys

Also, sometimes it's ins, F1, or F10.

If you find yourself doing this a lot, and are okay with attending every reboot, some BIOS' can be configured to just always boot to the BIOS menu. Also, there's sometimes a configurable time-frame for when it listens for keystrokes.

Disclaimer: I have 30 years of doing battle with PC's that I'm sifting through here, so some of that's bound to be old advice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I found an old picture of what my boot screen used to look like. If I wanted to do it via bcedit, what would my command line be? Sorry for being so clueless, I'm just really scared I'll brick my PC completely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Before you mess with commands I suggest you to do what I mentioned before. The picture you sent has the grub bootloader and assuming windows didn't nuke it, when you choose your Linux drive to boot first it should come back.

Also changing the boot order will not break your pc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks. It was actually F12, I managed to catch it for the split second it showed; for some reason it doesn't always show the commands when I switch it on.

This is what I got.

I selected Ubuntu and I got my choice back again. I hope i don't have to do this every time I boot though.

Thank you for being so patient with me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

You entered the boot selection, which is used for quickly booting into a different drive but it doesn't change which drive the PC boots into by default. To change that you'll need to enter the bios proper and you do that by spamming f2 or delete key just like you did with the f12 key.

[–] terminhell 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is what can happen dual booting from the same drive. If the windows bootloader updates it can override grub.

Usually you can still boot to the Linux partition from the efi menu manually. Then you can find dozens of guides to reinstall grub to fix this.

But it's likely to keep happening. Best dual boot setup is to have a second drive dedicated to non windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

My Linux is on a separate hard drive.