Realized I hadn’t booted Windows on my personal PC in 6 months and said yup time to nuke it all together
cannedtuna 53 points 7 months ago
Buddahriffic 6 points 7 months ago
Most mobos usually have a bios flash utility in the bios setup itself, so you don't need to rely on the windows installer. You just need to stick the update on a USB stick (extract the binary file from the zip).
crunchy 16 points 7 months ago
There are two or three work functions that can only be done on Windows when working from home. So it gets its own Windows 10 VM with just enough resources to perform those functions, installed with a local account and ShutUp10 to remove all the automated "feature" updates. If something goes wrong, I can nuke it and lose nothing.
wizardbeard 7 points 7 months ago
Might be able to starve it further with Windows 10 Ameliorated. It's got a fancy UI now, but under the hood it's a bunch of Powershell scripts to disable a lot of the bullshit (or at least it used to be).
Using IoT LTSC install media is good too, doesn't include a lot of the BS to begin with.
BonkTheAnnoyed 6 points 7 months ago
Don't use your phone computer for work. Even if you're an independent consultant, S Corp or whatever. Just don't.
For privacy and legal reasons, and your own sanity, just get a separate computer and only ever use that for work.
Most of the time you can write that off anyway.
a_wild_mimic_appears 2 points 7 months ago
I use winboat so I can have Windows programs in a seamless window on Linux. Still a VM, but less annoying to use in comparison to a full RDP session (which is possible if needed)
yardratianSoma 10 points 7 months ago
the cat in the image is windows update taking over the linux boot partition: the box, instead of leaving it alone for the much more comfortable windows boot partition: the cat tree.
StarryPhoenix97 11 points 7 months ago
I'm in school. I 100% need windows for proctored tests. Institutions that offer online schooling are slowly building infrastructure around Microsoft 365 and underlying tech that depends on windows.
I get it. I main Linux too but you 100% need windows in remote learning. So it's dual boot.
Jesus_666 4 points 7 months ago
Until you update your EFI and have forgotten all about the fact that non-Windows EFI boot images need to be registered with the Secure Boot key store even if Secure Boot is off. And that the key store is wiped when updating the EFI.
And then you spend an entire afternoon trying to find out why your Linux boot every isn't even recognized by the EFI anymore. Fun.
nightwatch_admin 6 points 7 months ago
Well, it makes little difference in the end; Windows should keep its grubby fingers out of someone else’s partitions. Whether this be Linux, MacOS or - yes - another Windows installation.
Broadfern 5 points 7 months ago
If I didn’t have to use it a handful of times a year for work I’d have wiped my windows drive and extended my Linux storage. Alas.
I feel for the folks who can’t afford a second drive to dual boot.
Waraugh 4 points 7 months ago
I have five machines, one headless, the other four on KVM, 2 Linux 2 windows. Mainly only use the one windows for work bs that I never want to touch my personal space. I spend most my time on my Linux machine and just use rustdesk though. Having three monitors helps because one is pretty much dedicated to rustdesk.
rockettaco37 3 points 7 months ago
The correct fix
PlaidBaron 3 points 7 months ago
This is the only way to go.
usualsuspect191 1 point 7 months ago
It's on a separate hard drive for me, and I have it so I select which drive to continue booting from when I first turn the machine on.
DarrinBrunner 1 point 7 months ago
I run Win10 IOT in a virtualbox to run one app once a month for a few minutes, that I haven't found a replacement for.
altphoto 51 points 7 months ago
If you do want windows do this....put windows on a sacrificial drive.... Promise to yourself that there's just garbage in there so it doesn't matter... Install Linux on another drive. Have your computer start from the Linux drive thru grub. Set up grub to recognize the windows drive. No, no matter how hard that bitch ass OS tries to update your godly Linux install, it won't find anything. Fuck you Microsoft! Knowledge is power. Now go out there and compute.
ImgurRefugee114 4 points 7 months ago
Nah emphasize sacrificial; you gotta reach in and rip out its beating heart like that one guy from Indiana Jones
NominatedNemesis 2 points 7 months ago
pls dont, HDD prices are on the rise as well. Just full format 😅
kuberoot 2 points 7 months ago
I'm going to call out rEFInd for dual booting, since it doesn't require you to configure anything and finds and recognizes bootable partitions at boot time. Less stuff to mess up, less work when you want to add/remove an OS.
rabidhamster 47 points 7 months ago
I built a computer in 2012 with the idea of having 3 OSes to boot from: Windows 7, Mac OS 10.7 (hackintosh), and CentOS.
I partition the drive into three main parts, and install each OS on one each. Except that I had to do it again, because Windows 7 lost its absolute shit that it wasn't on the first partition. Just threw an absolute shit-fit that it didn't come first.
So I re-do the installations, let Windows be first in the partition order, Mac OS second, CentOS third. The next problem was that I couldn't download any drivers on Windows, because it couldn't recognize the absolutely bog-standard network controller on my motherboard. So I boot into Mac OS X, which (with a couple of quick kext edits) already recognized all of the hardware on the mobo despite none of it being Apple or Apple related, download the drivers for windows, throw them on a FAT partition I set up to exchange data between the OSes, and finally get Windows running in about 4x the time it took to get Mac OS running on the exact same built-for-windows hardware I'd cobbled together.
And of course I fire up CentOS, and it was pretty much, "I got this" right off the bat.
I've been using Windows and Mac OS since the late 80s, and linux since about 1999, and I still have never encountered a more fussy OS than Windows.
Darkassassin07 19 points 7 months ago
I mean, that's what happens when you install spyware; it infects things...
nightwatch_admin 2 points 7 months ago
I am forced into using W11 and I can confirm this is true.
ScientifficDoggo 16 points 7 months ago
Considering Bill Gates made it, you can expect it to be grabby and invasive.
nightwatch_admin 3 points 7 months ago
Gnu linux and gonorrhoea windows
collapse_already 14 points 7 months ago
Maybe we should speak to them in a language they actually speak. In this case, I am thinking the proper language is class action lawsuit.
tackleberry 12 points 7 months ago
this is why we don't dual-boot with Windows anymore. Linux only. No computing device in my household runs on any version of Windows
_thebrain_ 11 points 7 months ago
Everyone saying you need two harddrives needs to know: all you need are 2 efi partitions: one for windows one for linux.. You can have them on the same drive. It's nonstandard, but I have never found a machine where it doesn't work.
FreddiesLantern 11 points 7 months ago
No, slopOS is not a cute cat.
rockettaco37 10 points 7 months ago
Windows 11 is just unusable junk. Makes Vista and ME look like masterpieces
Stonewyvvern 1 point 7 months ago
Just threw up in my mouth a little bit...
pogodem0n 9 points 7 months ago
In my experience, Windows only fucks-up your Linux bootloader if they both share the same EFI System Partition. Keeping them separate fixes the issue. Though, this means that you'll have to install Windows first, since it will automatically pick your Linux ESP otherwise.
Wfh 2 points 7 months ago
Not sure how I managed this but I installed windows long after Linux on my gaming PC (to use a VR headset that was given to me), and somehow it created its own EFI partition without nuking the real one.
Sp00kyB00k 1 point 7 months ago
Yup and adding a password to the BIOS was recommended to me by some sysadmin online. Don't know how that specifically helps but haven't had problems since.
funkless_eck 7 points 7 months ago
is there a way to avoid this? and what workflow should be in place ahead of it happening if not?
rtxn 10 points 7 months ago
You need two separate SSDs. One for Linux, one for Windows.
- Install Linux on SSD-A. Make sure it has an EFI system partition with a bootloader in it (GRUB, systemd-boot, REFInd), don't use an efistub. If the installer is done, disconnect the SSD to be safe.
- Install Windows on SSD-B with the desired updates. It will create its own EFI partition.
- Optionally, you can create a separate NTFS volume for your
C:\Usersso you don't have to mount the entire system on Linux if you need to access your files.
- Optionally, you can create a separate NTFS volume for your
- Boot into Windows. Use a tool to completely disable the updates. I use WinUtil by Chris Titus.
- Reconnect SSD-A.
- Boot and enter the firmware configuration. In the boot device list, make sure SSD-A has a much higher priority than SSD-B! You can even remove SSD-B from the bootable devices.
- Boot into Linux. In the bootloader configuration, create an entry that targets the Windows C: volume on SSD-B.
- Alternatively, you can just use the firmware's boot menu to boot from SSD-B.
Done. If you need to update Windows, physically disconnect SSD-A and boot from SSD-B.
ReluctantMuskrat 1 point 7 months ago
Any viable option if you can't install 2 drives? My laptop only allows one. It currently has Win10 on it and I'm hoping to replace it with Linux with an option to boot into Windows when needed, especially for my wife who isn't as technical or experienced with Linux. Not sure if there's anyway to do it without Windows nuking my setup.
rtxn 2 points 7 months ago
Simply dual-booting is viable. My Win10 + Arch worked well for over a year. If you're worried about Windows Update nuking the EFI partition, you can clone a backup of just that partition (dd or a dedicated tool like Clonezilla) that you can then restore from a live environment if needed. Another option, if the disk becomes unbootable, is to boot into a live environment from a USB stick and simply reinstall GRUB into the EFI partition.
(edit) It's also a good idea to reduce the frequency of forced updates. You can do that using WinUtil.
ReluctantMuskrat 1 point 7 months ago
Thank you. I think my biggest concern is that I can't fix it when it breaks, simply due to lack of experience. I've fixed busted Windows partitions and boot issues, but never Linux because I've just never had an issue with the installs I have and don't have nearly the same number of years under my belt with it.
As you said I think first order of business is a functional bootable USB which I can use to both backup and restore the partition, and I need to do a practice run restore to prove it works and that I know what I'm doing before I need it.
Rai 1 point 7 months ago
I didn’t do any disconnecting or reconnecting of any drives, just installed Pop on SSD0, Windows on SSD1, and set up three partitions on HDD: one formatted for Linux, one for Windows, and one meant for them to share if I ever need that. Using W10 LTSC IoT tho, so maybe that’s why it behaves better?
rtxn 1 point 7 months ago
Windows Update has a habit of eating the EFI partition. That's how I finally switched to full-time Linux. LTSC doesn't update as frequently as Win10 Pro, and probably doesn't touch the EFI partition as much, so there's a smaller chance for that to happen.
Dual-booting can work for years without issue. My method just ensures that Windows Update has absolutely zero chance to fuck with the ESP.
untorquer 4 points 7 months ago
Separate hard drives one for windows and one for Linux+GRUB then grub just needs to be told where the windows boot loader is and BIOS should load GRUB default.
OP post happens when you attempt to just use partitions. It can work per other comment, just more fragile.
NominatedNemesis 5 points 7 months ago
I went nuclear, when gaming was still hit or miss (only wine existed) since I only installed windows to update my BIOS. I advise to use a separate harddrive and do not do as I did: Used gparted to separate space for windows in my data drive, installed, updated the BIOS, used gparted to recover my initial state. I was sweating the whole time, but all of my data was intact.
Jankatarch 4 points 7 months ago
Hell yeah, accessibility text!
chatokun 1 point 7 months ago
Part of what got me off my ass to actually switch to Linux is that my Windows partition is on a 120gb drive. I don't need to claim it, my games are on 2 2tb drives that are Linux based, and 1 1tb shared drive that I mostly use just 1 of the games on, plus a basic "other" drive. I haven't been back in Windows for months, but I haven't confirmed all my games work in Linux yet.
Biggest priority is getting all the hotas buttons working for Elite.
MoffKalast 2 points 7 months ago
It's really funny when you have grub configured with linux as the default. Then when you select windows it's 50% chance it'll update something and reboot, booting you back to linux lmao. I guess they don't really want me to use it.
titanicx 2 points 7 months ago
I mean honestly you should be updating your Linux partition as well probably much more often than you already are. It's not the windows has more updates their updates are just automated whereas you have to actually trigger mostly updates on Linux.
MoffKalast 0 points 7 months ago
You can update linux without having to reboot for the most part, windows reboots literally twice for every tiny patch.
towerful 2 points 7 months ago
I've had one issue in the past year and a half, dual booting from the same NVMe.
After fixing the boot partition issues from a liveUSB, the actual solution was disabling fast-boot.
It's been solid for a year now.
But I always shutdown my laptop when I'm not using it. And any windows updates that require restarts, I make sure it fully reboots into windows again.
towerful 2 points 7 months ago
And it's still faster for my linux install to boot.
LUKS password for disk encryption, then user login to a usable desktop with network connectivity.
Windows takes ages to get to a login screen (bitlocker is disabled, so no decryption excuse), logging in is a breeze with fingerprint reader (certainly faster than typing in a password), then it sits there for ages looking like it's ready to be used, but the network stack isn't ready and it is just unusable until that comes up.
I'm so happy when I get a day of just working in Linux.
It just... Works.
carpelbridgesyndrome 2 points 7 months ago
I haven't had this problem since the early years of Windows 10 and that was because I was still on GPT+CSM boot. I ran the 10 to 11 upgrade blind and it just worked without torching my Linux install. As annoying as UEFI is it fixed most of the OS clash issues
Cosmonaut_Collin 1 point 6 months ago
I use to have windows 11 on a separate drive until an update broke windows and the drive. I've been happier ever since.
lumettaria 1 point 7 months ago
"If I fits, I sits"
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