Dual boot with Windows 11

[Mjolnix]

Hello,

I recently built a new PC with 1 TB SSD and I currently have Windows 11 on it. I want to do a dual boot setup on this PC, with the following idea

- Windows primarily for gaming, and for any other Windows-specific things

- Linux for all daily use including internet browsing and programming + everything else

 

I am a beginner in Linux, but familiar with it. I plan to use something like Mint. 

 

Now I would like to know two things from you guys - 

1. Do you think its a good idea?

2. I have seen multiple reports online about Windows 11 messing up dual boot systems. Since this is my main PC I am super hesitant if something like that is still happening and then would not risk it.

 

Unfortunately I don't have any budget left to buy a separate SSD at the moment. 

 

Please give your thoughts and share your experiences!

[y0ur5h4d0w]

there's no need to use windows for gaming, you'll have the same exact performances you have on windows (sometimes even better FPS) what you need is:

lutris (https://github.com/lutris/lutris)

steam + proton

heroic games launcher (https://heroicgameslauncher.com/)

this guide from GE that explain some basics (http://gloriouseggroll.tv/how-to-get-out-of-wine-dependency-hell/)

 

some time to understand how gaming on linux works (probably a couple hours if don't have much knowledge)

 

unless you use something VERY SPECIFIC on windows you don't need it

if you do need windows (sadage moment)

 

disconnect EVERY SINGLE DRIVE you have attached and plug only the drive you want to install windows on, then after you installed windows just select using the boot menu of your motherboard (usually f12) which disk to boot from

[Mjolnix]

9 minutes ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

there's no need to use windows for gaming, you'll have the same exact performances you have on windows (sometimes even better FPS) what you need is:

lutris (https://github.com/lutris/lutris)

steam + proton

heroic games launcher (https://heroicgameslauncher.com/)

this guide from GE that explain some basics (http://gloriouseggroll.tv/how-to-get-out-of-wine-dependency-hell/)

 

some time to understand how gaming on linux works (probably a couple hours if don't have much knowledge)

 

unless you use something VERY SPECIFIC on windows you don't need it

if you do need windows (sadage moment)

 

disconnect EVERY SINGLE DRIVE you have attached and plug only the drive you want to install windows on, then after you installed windows just select using the boot menu of your motherboard (usually f12) which disk to boot from

Thank you very much for your reply and all the links!

In any case, I still want to keep Windows, primarily because of comfort and I just know how everything works there, so in case of any need I want to have access to Windows at all times. Also, my main game is Valorant, and it's anticheat makes it impossible to play on Linux (as far as I know).

 

And when you say disconnect every single drive, you mean the physical drives, right? As I mentioned, I only have a single 1 TB SSD. So I assume I don't have to disconnect anything, unless I'm understanding it wrong? 

[GuiltySpark_]

10 minutes ago, Mjolnix said:

So I assume I don't have to disconnect anything, unless I'm understanding it wrong? 

He's talking about if you actually want to dual boot, at the very least use two independent physical drives and don't try to partition a single drive and then rely on a the Linux bootloader to pick between them. That will always break at one point leaving you stranded and back here asking for help fixing it (I've seen this exact scenario probably 100 times at this point). Personally i'll never bother dual booting, i'm just using two physical systems to play with Linux on the side. Its just too messy and problem prone though It's also very popular for beginners for some reason.

[y0ur5h4d0w]

20 minutes ago, Mjolnix said:

Thank you very much for your reply and all the links!

In any case, I still want to keep Windows, primarily because of comfort and I just know how everything works there, so in case of any need I want to have access to Windows at all times. Also, my main game is Valorant, and it's anticheat makes it impossible to play on Linux (as far as I know).

 

And when you say disconnect every single drive, you mean the physical drives, right? As I mentioned, I only have a single 1 TB SSD. So I assume I don't have to disconnect anything, unless I'm understanding it wrong? 

sadly yes, valorant is still a big no no on linux.

 

in theory you shouldn't disconnect anything but i highly reccomend to install linux on another drive because grub and windows boot loader doesn't like much to coexist, it's most likely that if you install linux grub will delete the windows boot loader and in order to fix this you'll have an headache for weeks without a way to solve the issue... i've been there and i've spent 50€ on a cheap 128gb disk for windows

 

in a nutshell, what will happen is that grub (linux bootloader) will wipe the boot partition to recreate one of it's own, this will result in windows boot loader completely broken and you can't boot into windows AT ALL, you can fix this, but i tried for 3 days (3h a day) and then i gave up, it costs less to buy a crappy SSD and dual boot with 2 devices that doesn't know that the other drive exists, this will alow you to choose via boot menu from your bios which bootloader to run and have 1 "defaulted" so when you boot normally without spamming f12 you can either boot to windows or linux and then force the boot to the other drive when you need it

 

just remember to set a fixed drive as your "default" boot drive in your bios otherwise you'll be stuck with booting from the "last used" drive

[OddOod]

40 minutes ago, Mjolnix said:

I still want to keep Windows, primarily because of comfort and I just know how everything works there

This is 1000% okay. 

41 minutes ago, Mjolnix said:

And when you say disconnect every single drive, you mean the physical drives, right? As I mentioned, I only have a single 1 TB SSD. So I assume I don't have to disconnect anything, unless I'm understanding it wrong? 

Honestly, if you're just using it for messing around and web surfing, you could easily grab some random used 250GB drive and drop linux on that. 

[Ha-Satan]

What sort of programming are you planning on doing on Linux? How demanding will it be?

 

What I did to "get into Linux" (and what I'm honestly still doing) is that I just bought a used laptop and put Linux Mint on it. My gaming PC is Windows but I only use it for gaming. 

 

Yeah, this would be a little bit more money up front, but unless you need to use Linux for really demanding tasks, an old used laptop will actually work just fine.

[NoLeafClover]

On 7/17/2025 at 3:27 PM, Mjolnix said:

I still want to keep Windows, primarily because of comfort and I just know how everything works there, so in case of any need I want to have access to Windows at all times

This is absolutely a very sensible approach, and, in my view, you shouldn't let anybody tell you otherwise. Once you're comfortable enough with Linux you can always make the choice for a full switch, if that is your wish.

 

Linux may be desktop-ready for a lot of home, and even work, uses but don't be fooled by claims that it's gaming ready. Recent drivers and especially tools like Proton have gone a long way, but it's not a guaranteed experience. In some cases games may, in fact, run better. In other they might run worse, or not at all. Proton is a compatibility layer, not a silver bullet, and it comes with the usual caveats. That said, it's shockingly impressive how well it fares. Nonetheless, anti-cheat is basically a no-go on Linux.

 

But things are constantly improving so who knows...

 

On 7/17/2025 at 3:13 PM, Mjolnix said:

1. Do you think its a good idea?

Yes.

 

On 7/17/2025 at 3:13 PM, Mjolnix said:

Unfortunately I don't have any budget left to buy a separate SSD at the moment.

And that's absolutely okay! Buying a 2nd SSD purely for a 2nd OS should be right at the bottom of anyone's priority list when there's better ways to spend that money. Yes, it will be a bit more advantageous, but IMO there's better uses for a 2nd drive (e.g. RAID).

 

On 7/17/2025 at 3:13 PM, Mjolnix said:

2. I have seen multiple reports online about Windows 11 messing up dual boot systems. Since this is my main PC I am super hesitant if something like that is still happening and then would not risk it.

On a modern UEFI system with GPT formatted drive (basically any system for nearly a decade) it's mostly a myth. I say mostly, because there could be that "oops" situation, but it's important to understand why it happens and what for. Have a look at my previous posts here and here (essentially the same). When you know what to expect, you can know what to do if and when it happens. Yes, Windows is an entitled piece of dung and touches things without authorisation, but a Linux distro that provides good default configuration should not be affected. Fedora, for example, is a distro that has sane GRUB set-up and Windows updates, despite potentially changing the partition layout, will not break the GRUB bootloader. They could change the boot order, but this could happen even with two drives, so not really unique to single-drive dual boot.

 

Don't be afraid to try  

 

The one tip I would give, however, is to use Linux to partition your drive, if you're familiar with the process. GPT partitioning scheme, with the 1st partition being the EFI System Partition - about 1 GiB should be more than enough, partition code is EF00, format as FAT32. Windows still seems to prefer being the 1st non-ESP partition, so put the C: drive partition 2nd, after the ESP. The rest is up to you. Then I would recommend to first install Windows then Linux as it's generally a "smoother" ride, and you might not have to deal with boot order changes.

 

Of course, it helps to be aware of what you can do  to recover from rare, but "worst case" scenario. This usually involves using a Live Linux ISO to enter into your existing installation and reinstalling the boot loader from there. But I will say, in more than two decades of continuously having at least one same-drive dual boot system, since EFI+GPT was made the standard I can recall only one or two occasions where something would require me to go down this route.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 7/17/2025 at 10:42 AM, GuiltySpark_ said:

He's talking about if you actually want to dual boot, at the very least use two independent physical drives and don't try to partition a single drive and then rely on a the Linux bootloader to pick between them.

Why? It's what I've always done in my laptops. Just pick an entry from GRUB and that's it. Of course, start with Windows, then add Linux and have it take over, adding entry for both. Windows is terrible at being the second OS and making entries for existing OSs.

 

On 7/17/2025 at 10:22 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

there's no need to use windows for gaming, you'll have the same exact performances you have on windows (sometimes even better FPS) what you need is:

lutris (https://github.com/lutris/lutris)

steam + proton

heroic games launcher (https://heroicgameslauncher.com/)

this guide from GE that explain some basics (http://gloriouseggroll.tv/how-to-get-out-of-wine-dependency-hell/)

 

some time to understand how gaming on linux works (probably a couple hours if don't have much knowledge)

So what you're saying is he needs Windows for gaming 

[y0ur5h4d0w]

7 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Why? It's what I've always done in my laptops. Just pick an entry from GRUB and that's it. Of course, start with Windows, then add Linux and have it take over, adding entry for both. Windows is terrible at being the second OS and making entries for existing OSs.

 

So what you're saying is he needs Windows for gaming 

nope, he needs to emulate just the bare minimum of winpoop in order tu run games, you don't need windows for gaming, your statement would be correct if a Virtual Machine was involved, everything is 100% linux 

[y0ur5h4d0w]

8 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Why? It's what I've always done in my laptops. Just pick an entry from GRUB and that's it. Of course, start with Windows, then add Linux and have it take over, adding entry for both. Windows is terrible at being the second OS and making entries for existing OSs.

 

windows bootloader tend to break and wants to overwrite any other bootloader because it's what microsoft wants to force you, dual booting linux and windows is pain at the moment that you install windows as secondary OS, it breaks everything in a way that any repair is a waste of time and i found out the hard way years ago. it's faster to have 2 separate disks and choose via boot menu

[SpaceGhostC2C]

8 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

nope, he needs to emulate just the bare minimum of winpoop in order tu run games, you don't need windows for gaming, your statement would be correct if a Virtual Machine was involved, everything is 100% linux 

It's not about that... I think you missed the irony of "you don't need Windows, you just need these 20 steps and to learn these couple subjects you currently don't know", I just pointed it out  

 

8 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

windows bootloader tend to break and wants to overwrite any other bootloader because it's what microsoft wants to force you,

Has not happened to me when proceeding as I described.

8 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

dual booting linux and windows is pain at the moment that you install windows as secondary OS

It's not OP situation (nor mine, for that matter). He has Windows, so Linux would be the second OS OP installs. GRUB should manage it just fine from then onwards.

8 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

it's faster to have 2 separate disks and choose via boot menu

I'm not sure about faster, but that is indeed a viable option. It requires a second drive, though. That can be very limiting, if at all possible, for laptops.

[NoLeafClover]

On 7/24/2025 at 9:09 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

windows bootloader tend to break and wants to overwrite any other bootloader because it's what microsoft wants to force you

This is incorrect. On an EFI system the Windows boot loader is simply another EFI binary on the ESP - "/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi" - with other supporting files. Windows does, sometimes, update the files not much unlike GRUB, and does tend to set it as the preferred boot option without prompting. But it does not remove any Linux boot loader files or the Linux EFI boot option, which still remains in place. In the vast majority of instances a simple change to the EFI boot order will restore GRUB.

 

On 7/24/2025 at 9:09 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

windows is pain at the moment that you install windows as secondary OS

There's little difference. I have done this many, many, many times and the outcome is the same as above. Windows first just makes it a bit less of a hassle.

 

On 7/24/2025 at 9:09 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

it breaks everything in a way that any repair is a waste of time

This is also absolutely wrong. The worst that a Windows set up process or even update can do is re-format the ESP. It's highly unlikely, though not impossible. Such a scenario will mean GRUB's EFI binary is not present on the ESP and will inevitably fail to load the GRUB menu or boot Linux. Recovering from this situation involves:

1. Booting from a live Linux ISO/USB
2. chroot'ing into the existing system
3. If ESP was reformatted, updating /etc/fstab with the UUID of the new ESP filesystem
4. Re-installing GRUB from there
5. If the ESP is used as the de facto /boot partition, meaning it also stores the kernel and initramfs, then re-installing the kernel package will put those files back in place.

Granted, it might not be a very user friendly process or particularly appealing to a newcomer, but is very far from "waste of time" or impossible and has virtually a 100% success rate. When you've done it once and are familiar with the process it takes less than 5 minutes.

 

Frankly, it's really not that different or much more complicated than the rare occasion when Windows borks its own boot loader and one has to recover it with a recovery environment and BCDBOOT at the command prompt. Inconvenient, not impossible.

[y0ur5h4d0w]

17 minutes ago, NoLeafClover said:

This is incorrect. On an EFI system the Windows boot loader is simply another EFI binary on the ESP - "/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi" - with other supporting files. Windows does, sometimes, update the files not much unlike GRUB, and does tend to set it as the preferred boot option without prompting. But it does not remove any Linux boot loader files or the Linux EFI boot option, which still remains in place. In the vast majority of instances a simple change to the EFI boot order will restore GRUB.

anytime i've installed windows as second OS it ALWAYS wiped my grub partition, once windows even wiped completely an ext4 12tb drive in order to install it's crappy bootloader partition of 100MB making me lose 10tb of data, not fun at all.

 

 

unless stuff have changed in the past 2 years this is what happened to me. 

 

23 minutes ago, NoLeafClover said:

This is also absolutely wrong. The worst that a Windows set up process or even update can do is re-format the ESP. It's highly unlikely, though not impossible. Such a scenario will mean GRUB's EFI binary is not present on the ESP and will inevitably fail to load the GRUB menu or boot Linux. Recovering from this situation involves:

1. Booting from a live Linux ISO/USB
2. chroot'ing into the existing system
3. If ESP was reformatted, updating /etc/fstab with the UUID of the new ESP filesystem
4. Re-installing GRUB from there
5. If the ESP is used as the de facto /boot partition, meaning it also stores the kernel and initramfs, then re-installing the kernel package will put those files back in place.

in theory i would agree with you, in practice i've banged my head against the wall in the process you described for more then 2 hours and nothing worked, i've watched probably 10 different videos about how to make it work without success. 

 

 

probably it has always been bad luck on my side or inexperience from me, i don't know, but i'm never ever going to advice someone to dual boot windows and linux, installing windows in one SSD and windows in another SSD takes less time then troublesohoting something that could specially in early days of experience take hours without a 100% success rate.

[NoLeafClover]

1 hour ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

anytime i've installed windows as second OS it ALWAYS wiped my grub partition, once windows even wiped completely an ext4 12tb drive in order to install it's crappy bootloader partition of 100MB making me lose 10tb of data, not fun at all

Difficult to tell what may have happened w/o knowing the exact circumstances. This isn't to diminish or suggest your experience(s) did not happen.

 

But I believe these are the outlier cases, and not necessarily representative of the most likely outcome. Of course, it's perfectly understandable why people would be biased by their own experience and avoid attempting a process that has previously failed.

 

Realistically, every (re)installation of any OS carries risks. Including Linux itself. Personally, I don't trust Linux installers either for those same reasons. I always manually partition my drive(s) and explicitly tell an installer what to use and how. Though this is in part because I've yet to see an installer that could achieve the set-up I have/want without manual intervention, but that's a whole other topic.

 

Re changes, I don't think anything significant has changed in the last 10y, maybe more. At least not much since EFI and GPT have been the norm. The MBR days were certainly much more problematic and Windows would most certainly wipe the small but critical boot loader code stored there.

 

1 hour ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

in theory i would agree with you, in practice i've banged my head against the wall in the process you described for more then 2 hours and nothing worked, i've watched probably 10 different videos about how to make it work without success. 

Sadly there are peculiarities with each distro and there isn't exactly "uniform" process outside of the high-level steps. This is the downside of the mess that the Linux world is with its hundreds of distros.

 

While the "recipe" is the same, there will be peculiarities with each installation. It becomes easy once you crack it for your set-up, but I'm not surprised by what you're describing. Many articles, including official docs, might also miss out on some critical steps. There's no uniform process and unless one exercises a bit of creative thinking and additional know-how it can feel fruitless. This isn't to say it's not recoverable though. But it is one more example of why Linux, in the broadest sense, isn't quite yet ready for mass adoption.

[Lurking]

On 7/17/2025 at 3:04 PM, NoLeafClover said:

use Linux to partition your drive, if you're familiar with the process. GPT partitioning scheme, with the 1st partition being the EFI System Partition - about 1 GiB should be more than enough, partition code is EF00, format as FAT32. Windows still seems to prefer being the 1st non-ESP partition, so put the C: drive partition 2nd, after the ESP. The rest is up to you. Then I would recommend to first install Windows then Linux as it's generally a "smoother" ride, and you might not have to deal with boot order changes.

Would it also be OK to just create a partition for windows first, and let W11 installer create the EFi partition (without manually setting this up as you suggest)? 

I assume most people installing Linux already had Windows installed a while ago and don't want to re-install that just to do what you say. 

that at least how i (successfully) install my triple boot (W11 and two Linux distros).

 

I also noticed some Linux distros required me to manually create a 1 GiB boot partition, and some did it automatically. 

 

Is there something that can be done to prevent W11 updates from messing things up later?  

[NoLeafClover]

21 hours ago, Lurking said:

Would it also be OK to just create a partition for windows first, and let W11 installer create the EFi partition (without manually setting this up as you suggest)?

Yes, Windows set up, if booted in EFI mode, should automatically create the ESP if it's missing. The issue here is that it will most likely create one that is rather small - about 200-300MB and doesn't allow you to choose the size. Unless you open a Command Prompt during set up and do it yourself, similar to doing it on Linux. This is plenty for having boot loader files, but is not enough if you plan on reusing the ESP instead of a separate "/boot" partition and want to keep 2, maybe 3 kernel versions (in case of regressions).

 

Some distros will default to using systemd-boot + ESP for the kernels. Others will default to a more traditional Linux layout that has a separate "/boot" partition. There's little right or wrong here, but in the former case you will need the ESP to be large enough. IMHO about ~1GiB should suffice for boot loader files + 2-3 kernels, depending on distro.

 

21 hours ago, Lurking said:

I assume most people installing Linux already had Windows installed a while ago and don't want to re-install that just to do what you say.

That's fine. The suggestion you quote assumes a clean slate, which gives the most flexibility as re-partitioning is a painful process. If an ESP + Windows already exists and full re-partitioning is not desirable, then my recommendation would be to have a separate ~1GiB "/boot" partition, as outlined above, to store the kernels and boot-loader configuration (if using GRUB).

 

21 hours ago, Lurking said:

I also noticed some Linux distros required me to manually create a 1 GiB boot partition, and some did it automatically. 

Difficult to say why. In cases where the ESP is not used for storing boot loader config and kernel images, some distros might default to always creating a separate "/boot" partition. Separate "/boot" partition is not required if the root "/" partition is not encrypted as it can be mounted by the boot loader to read the required files, but will be required if it is. This is usually why it's generally seen as good practice for a default layout.

 

21 hours ago, Lurking said:

Is there something that can be done to prevent W11 updates from messing things up later?  

I'm not sure, to be honest. I would love to know that too. In my experience things just point to Microsoft not giving a dung about making Windows behave properly in a multi-OS set up, or just generally not touching anything HDD-related w/o user confirmation.

[spacepickle]

On 7/24/2025 at 4:09 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

windows bootloader tend to break and wants to overwrite any other bootloader because it's what microsoft wants to force you, dual booting linux and windows is pain at the moment that you install windows as secondary OS, it breaks everything in a way that any repair is a waste of time and i found out the hard way years ago. it's faster to have 2 separate disks and choose via boot menu

Install windows first and this won’t be an issue. Updates will occasionally wipe your EFI partition which is annoying but messes up your Linux install, not your windows install and can be fixed. Gaming on Linux lowkey sucks though, if you spend several hours learning the right skills you can get 80% of games working but that 20% is gonna be hard/impossible. Compare that to Windows, where if you’re ok with bloat and them spying on you 100% of games work. 

[GNULINUXPRO]

Honestly, If you don't care about software freedom then there is really no reason to use GNU/Linux. Its breaks more often, Its harder, It doesn't have as much software or games, there are alot of downsides. Often what happens with dual boot systems is that one operating system is used so much, that the other becomes obsolete and doesn't get used.

[NoLeafClover]

18 hours ago, spacepickle said:

Updates will occasionally wipe your EFI partition

Extremely unlikely. I have never seen this happen on dual boot systems in the 10+ years of EFI being the norm on consumer devices. Not even after reinstalling Windows or installing Windows second. There's no reason to do so, not even by Windows. Updates to Windows boot files can simply be done by wiping or overwriting any files under "{ESP}/EFI/Microsoft" and "{ESP}/System".

 

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's something most people should never really have to be actively concerned about. One person on these forums mentioned they've had this happen a number of times. I still think this is an extremely unlikely scenario and there may have been something else at play in those instances.

 

But all that said, it's also one more reason why having a traditional layout with a separate "/boot" partition is the sensible thing to do, at least on single-drive dual-boot systems - it will ensure kernel images don't get deleted too, simplifying the repair process.

[akira_cachyosbtw]

On 7/17/2025 at 3:13 PM, Mjolnix said:

Hello,

I recently built a new PC with 1 TB SSD and I currently have Windows 11 on it. I want to do a dual boot setup on this PC, with the following idea

- Windows primarily for gaming, and for any other Windows-specific things

- Linux for all daily use including internet browsing and programming + everything else

 

I am a beginner in Linux, but familiar with it. I plan to use something like Mint. 

 

Now I would like to know two things from you guys - 

1. Do you think its a good idea?

2. I have seen multiple reports online about Windows 11 messing up dual boot systems. Since this is my main PC I am super hesitant if something like that is still happening and then would not risk it.

 

Unfortunately I don't have any budget left to buy a separate SSD at the moment. 

 

Please give your thoughts and share your experiences!

dual boot across different ssds / hdds  so windows doesnt slime linuxs boot loader