this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
42 points (93.8% liked)
Linux
48234 readers
619 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The issue is that grub, the bootloader, doesn't know about windows and can't boot it. You can go into BIOS and change the boot order to boot windows without figuring this out as a stopgap.
I had to create /etc/default/grub as well on arch, so do that and rerun grub-mkconfig.
As usual, the arch wiki has a great but short guide on that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Detecting_other_operating_systems Read the entire article to get an idea of how to work with grub, then follow the windows section exactly.
That's the problem not even the bios is reading windows after the EOS installation. I keep changing the order of things but when I boot from the other SSD it just says "checking media" and then "failed" and it gets looped over and over again.
But I can still see the windows drives and partitions from EOS... It's the weirdest ting that I've seen... Would you recommend just doing a clean install of everything in that case?
Sounds like there's something wrong with your windows EFI partition in that case.
I don't know how to fix that short of a reinstall. If you do reinstall, make sure to unplug (yes, that's actually neccessary) all drives except the one you want to install windows on, otherwise the installer is almost guaranteed to fiddle around with them despite you not selecting them.
Lmao the windows installer won't mess around with your other drives. Not even other partitions. I've reinstalled Windows 11 alongside Linux without issue. Other than having to reset the default efi image in the BIOS.
There are people who make backups and people who will.
It's the same thing with this: Even if it goes nicely most of the time, it'll eventually screw up everything and you'll be spending at least an hour figuring out what went wrong.
It sounds like your EFI partition got fucked somehow. You could boot a live usb with windows tool like Hirens or Sergei and fix it in there. There are tools in Sergei to fix these issues, I sometimes do this at my job.
This is what I'm thinking happened. I already said this in another comment but will expand here because this comments refers specifically to the EFI partition. Here's the weird thing, 3 days ago, I had 2 SSDs:
I decided to do a clean install of Win11. When I did, I had both SSDs connected to my laptop, and when I finished the installation, this was how it was divided:
It was highly confusing, because I thought I had Fedora there, my immediate thought was that Win11 just straight up ravaged both my SSDs and decided "fuck it, let's install wherever the fuck I want" and it did. HOWEVER I could still get into Fedora and use it normally. Still had all the apps and programs I installed, everything was correct. So I assumed the drive still belonged to Fedora.
When I installed EOS, I chose "Erase Disk" on the secondary SSD (the one with Fedora, the one that had this "EFI partition" that didn't have before. I think when I erased that SSD, I erased the Windows EFI partition and couldn't boot as a result. And that's why the BIOS was not recognizing the OS, but at the same time I could just mount the SSD in EOS and just look t my files normally. So I think that's what happened, but honestly I'm not even sure of how it happened.
Yeah it sounds like you messed up your boot partition. I'm not sure with EFI partitions, but when I used to mess up my legacy boots, I would recover using the windows recovery tools. Some command that would recover them. Again, I'm not sure abilout EFI partition, but maybe this is all you needed.
Anyway, good luck on your next try. I for one go with the safe route of removing drive(s) until I have the drives I need the install process to know about, you know when first installing an OS. I just don't have the time for reinstalling things if something does go wrong.
I have a similar issue on my PC. My windows ssd doesnt even appear in the BIOS unless I keep my computer on for over 30 minutes.
I know it's not a fix but you could try booting to endavourOS for sometime and then reboot the system into bios and maybe the windows boot entry will show up. (This works in my case, although when I shutdown the system and boot it the next day, I have to repeat all this)
Whenever I install a minimal linux distro like void, arch or gentoo all my boot entries disappear somehow (even though I have configured grub correctly). But for some reason when I install a distro with the calmares installer this doesn't happen.
I even tried reinstalling windows multiple times on different ssd's still no luck. My hunch is that the NVRAM in my MSI motherboard is causing the problem.
I would appreciate it, if anyone more knowledgeable on this topic can shed some light on this.
The checking media message is your bios trying to boot from some external network drive. I had that issue for the longest, and I realized that I misunderstood how the boot order actually worked.
Try swapping your boot order around to opposite how it is currently? That's what I did and it solved my problem
I tried all orders, there were 2 Samsung SSDs (primary and secondary), and another one called "EFI" something... When I changed the order to SSD #1 it opened EndevourOS, when I changed to SSD #2 it said "checking media........ failed", and when I put the "EFI" as the first in the order, it just restarted and went again to EndevourOS. At the end, I had to do the easiest and fastest thing: start over.
I think that when I installed Win11, it took part of my Fedora partition somehow, I'm not even sure if that's what happened and if that is what actually happened I have no clue how it happened, but right before erasing my secondary SSD to install EOS, there was a mention of a Windows "EFI" partition there, even though I could still get into Fedora. So when I erased that, I think I erased something related to Windows that I shouldn't have erased
To boot endeavour, did you have to change any BIOS settings? If so, change those back and ignore the reat of this.
Backup your windows user folder if you haven't already, put it somewhere safely away from your PC
No seriously, back up your files to another drive asap
You will deeply regret it if you do not back up
Do you know what the word hubris means? Back those files up, champ
I mean, it's your computer, so you can make whatever terrible decisions you want. You should still back it up tho
Make a windows installation USB or, better yet, a winpe usb if you have access to another windows computer. Boot into it, but DO NOT continue with the installation. Instead, select the option that lets you run Startup Repair.
Run startup repair
When that fails, because it's apparently a script that just freezes the PC for a minute before telling you it failed, follow this guide
If all that fails: unless you really wanna RTFM on the windows bootloader and EFI partition, or piece together the equivalent knowledge from 83 different forums and blog posts after you separate out the mountains ofmisinformation, you can always just reinstall windows and restore from the backups... you did back up, right?