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[SOLVED-See Comments] My "Windows" boot entry has disappeared from the EFI menu (pawb.social)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/techsupport

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Title. I dual-boot Windows and Linux. I always saw people making "WINDOWS DELETED MY LINUX BOOTLOADER OMGOMG" posts and it had never happened to me. Now, the opposite has happened. I switched from EndeavourOS to OpenSUSE and now my windows install is no longer selectable on boot.

I keep Windows in a separate drive entirely, so instead of using grub, I use the EFI's boot-select menu thingamafuck (look I don't know jargon okay?) to choose Windows when I need it.

Well today it's not there. Only the Linux entries show up. The Windows partition itself seems to be in good order, like, I can access it from within Linux no problem.

But yeah it doesn't show up on my EFI selector thingie. I imagine I could get the EFI Shell going, but I have no idea how to use THAT either.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Dual-booting is fine, but this kind of thing does happen.

Either "os-prober" isn't installed or /etc/default/grub has GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false.

Fix those, then reinstall the bootloader.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

os-prober was installed, but it was indeed disabled.

I went through the process of activating it and remaking the grub configuration. But it seems to not care about Windows, likely because, as stated in my post, it is on a separate physical drive. Probably some way to tell it to look there as well, but I don't know it. I might do some searching of my own later, right now I got shit to do. Booted into my laptop (which I keep with just windows because its ssd is too small for me to have any fun)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I dual booted for about two years before switching entirely over to Linux, and I found that using reFind as a bootloader instead of Grub was significantly less hassle. I'd suggest you check it out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have HEARD of reFind, but could not figure out how to use it. You got a good tutorial to link me up with?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I recall following the Arch wiki entry, but the official documentation is very useful too.

The easiest way I found to install it was to 1) Install refind through my distro's package manager and then 2) simply run the refind-install command in a terminal, which completely automates the process and sets reFind as the default bootloader for your machine.

If you want to tweak the appearance, icons, or the available boot entries on the reFind boot screen then just follow the official documentatuon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

When I dual-boot it is always with a separate drive, less often does MS hose the bootloader in that situation. Normally it is findable. I dont recall havong to point it to anything.

I keep a usb boot drive with a number of images (ventoy), including "super grub boot disk" to get me out of these situations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

When I dual-boot it is always with a separate drive, less often does MS hose the bootloader in that situation. Normally it is findable. I dont recall havong to point it to anything.

I keep a usb boot drive with a number of images (ventoy), including "super grub boot disk" to get me out of these situations.