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[PSA] New Windows update breaks dual booting Windows with Linux.

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Go to solution Solved by EChondo,

So this shouldn't be an issue if you do a dual boot after you install the W10 update.

 

Kinda shitty. Probably not intentional on their part, but still shitty.

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[Don't worry, there's news in this post.... somewhere.]

This is news (to me) and I think it's fairly important to people who do this. So this can be a warning as well. Moderators, move it if you need to.

Anyone who ...

 

So, I have a dual boot system.

 

I have been in Windows 10 for a few days. I then reboot into Debian and am greeted with a grub rescue console. For you "non-linux" people, that means the bootloader (the thing that loads the OS) can't find my OS. Welp. That's not good. 

After some googling, I get into my OS. I back it up just in case. I do some other stuff then reboot into Windows again.

5 hours later, I reboot back into Debian. I'm greeted with the grub rescue console again, even though I did a command to fix grub (weird). However, my new attempts at getting into my OS fail. It's completely borked (broken to the point of rage that I massively typo broken). 

So. I go about my day troubleshooting this problem for 12 hours. At one point, I think my SSD or Mobo is failing. At another, I think Windows is breaking my dual boot install.

 

Turns out it was the latter, in that, Windows 10 broke my dual boot system. 

Source: http://www.legendiary.at/2016/01/04/windows-10-update-changes-partition-table-and-breaks-grub/ (there's a link to a thread with someone explaining the issue there)

 

TL;DR of what happens: Microsoft added a new partition they need for some reason. This breaks grub and makes it unable to find your Linux boot drive by number, although UUID is unaffected.

 

There's a solution to fixing it (which did not work for me) in the above linked post. 

Whether Microsoft did this intentionally or not, I have quite a bit of enmity towards them now.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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What I want to learn is how to get into linux via the windows boot loader... something that I have never been able to pull off...

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Funny thing: This isn't the first time this has happened.

What I want to learn is how to get into linux via the windows boot loader... something that I have never been able to pull off...

It's actually pretty simple. Just install Windows then Linux. Linux won't break the Windows install and will add an option for it in it's boot loader.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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I feel like W10 Updates have "accidently" broken a lot of things that objectively MS wouldn't want users to be doing.  As stated this isn't the first time dual boot was broken, programs have been "accidently" deleted, settings keep "accidently" getting changed.  Hard to keep calling it an accident when it seems to happen every other time.

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I have no idea if I'm affected by this, as my bootloader and Elementary OS install is on another SSD. Haven't booted it up in a while tho, maybe it's time to do that. 

You will most likely not be affected by it, in regards to Elementary OS.

The Windows system will install the partition on the drive that Windows is installed on. And Windows will update the bootloader with where it's new partition is.

The issue with this is that Windows adds a new partition. Grub thinks your Linux partition is (hd0,gpt4), as an example. When Windows adds the new partition, it updates the EFI partition with it's new location, but does not update it for Linux.

So your Linux partition goes from (hd0,gpt4) to (hd0,gpt5) because of Windows' new partition, but that's only if they are on the same drive.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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sigh :/ ms...

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See, this is why we need to hammer Microsoft into letting us consumers choose when or when not to install updates. It's so stuff like this can be avoided for almost all people.

Ye ole' train

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Doesn't reconfiguring grub fix the issue?

Depends. It did not for me.

I did grub-update on my system after getting into it through grub rescue. It seemed to discover things fine.

After I tried booting into Windows 10, then Debian again, still got grub rescue, except this time it couldn't read the EFI partition. 

Somehow, the EFI partition was formatted some other format instead of FAT32. Yet Windows 10 was fine with it. 

 

Re-configuring Grub will only work as long as the EFI partition is something Grub can read. How it got to be a different format is beyond me.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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Depends. It did not for me.

I did grub-update on my system after getting into it through grub rescue. It seemed to discover things fine.

After I tried booting into Windows 10, then Debian again, still got grub rescue, except this time it couldn't read the EFI partition. 

Somehow, the EFI partition was formatted some other format instead of FAT32. Yet Windows 10 was fine with it. 

 

Re-configuring Grub will only work as long as the EFI partition is something Grub can read. How it got to be a different format is beyond me.

 

That's weird as hell. Makes me think it MUST be a mistake on MS' part

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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Depends. It did not for me.

I did grub-update on my system after getting into it through grub rescue. It seemed to discover things fine.

After I tried booting into Windows 10, then Debian again, still got grub rescue, except this time it couldn't read the EFI partition. 

Somehow, the EFI partition was formatted some other format instead of FAT32. Yet Windows 10 was fine with it. 

 

Re-configuring Grub will only work as long as the EFI partition is something Grub can read. How it got to be a different format is beyond me.

 

Aren't EFI partitions always formatted as GPT? I know that non-EFI bootable Windows installers can't format or write to GPT partitions, they have to be initialized as EFI devices.

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Aren't EFI partitions always formatted as GPT? I know that non-EFI bootable Windows installers can't format or write to GPT partitions, they have to be initialized as EFI devices.

You are conflating two things.

What a Disk uses as a partition table, and what those partitions are formatted as, in terms of a File System.

GPT is not a file system. MBR is not a file system. They are ways of storing the partition tables on a drive. 

FAT32 (general FS), EXT2,3,or4 (Linux FS), NTFS (Microsoft FS), or HFS+ (Apple FS) are file systems. Ways of laying out and managing storage of data on a drive. 

The EFI partition, I thought, was always supposed to be FAT32 so anything could easily read it. Mine being something random or unreadable implies to me it was corrupted. :/

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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Pretty well every windows "upgrade" Style updates seems to break dual boot....
Normally it's a matter of re-running your bootloader setup.

 

I also feel like if you're not using a persistent naming scheme at this point you need to fix that.

 

I now have my windows and linux on different drives with separate boot partitions so that windows doesn't touch anything to do with my linux drive.
Then my system boots to the linux drive. Bootloader lists both windows and linux drive. You select which one boot accordingly.

Windows updates. Wipes its boot partition and rewrites accordingly and I can still boot into linux.

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All that "We love Linux" talk at Microsoft and then this happens. I'm sure it was a mistake, but come on Microsoft, you're a multi-billion dollar company...

They do, just not for consumers (they only get the benefits that come indirectly from the enterprise segment), and I don't think there are many organisations that need to dual boot a server.

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I feel like W10 Updates have "accidently" broken a lot of things that objectively MS wouldn't want users to be doing.  As stated this isn't the first time dual boot was broken, programs have been "accidently" deleted, settings keep "accidently" getting changed.  Hard to keep calling it an accident when it seems to happen every other time.

Yeah a Win10 update also broke Gamemaker Studio. Or at least it made it so you couldn't start the thing up. That was really annoying.

Ive heard the same update broke Skype, and the fix was exactly the same. Uninstall the update.

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Meh, my Ubuntu (and GRUB efi) and are a totally different drive to my Windows 10.

Do your worse Microsoft, you won't break my Tri Boot.

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