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Windows, Can You Not? This Is Why Nobody Likes You.

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An Honest Disclaimer

Let me be honest here. This blog post is for my future reference and your entertainment than a troubleshooting guide you should follow.

The backstory

After a decade of not using Windows, I finally caved in and dual booted Windows 10 along with my Linux instance. The reasoning was simple. Use Windows to learn and work on Fusion 360 CAD projects. In hindsight, it was a ok-ish decision. I wanted to learn Fusion 360 to make hobby projects. Installing Windows seemed like a small price to pay, but apparently, I also paid with my sanity.

What could possible go wrong?

Turns out a lot! Most common among them is Windows messing up the Bootloader. Windows Bootloader doesn't just overwrite Grub entries, it decides to have a midlife crisis and makes it impossible to load into Linux unless you're some kind of wizard with BIOS settings and command line spells.

Well at least it was just when we installed Windows for the first time on a machine with Linux. It was as a one time pain but that was it.

Not anymore. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but now every single time I update Windows for those essential security patches, it decides to mess up Grub like it's a hobby. And somehow, the fix gets more ridiculous each time. I fixed it once. I fixed it twice. I fixed it for the 3rd time now, because who doesn't love a good repetitive task, right?

Turns out it doesn't nuke your grub entry. It just overwrites the bootloader order in some weird way and just reinstalling grub wouldn't fix it.

This blog is for me when this invevitably happens again and I don't remember what I did last time.

The solution

Like I said a few sentences above, it's not a case of Windows Bootloader nuking the Grub. It messes up the bootloader order. I can't fix it easily from the bios on my machine for reasons.

This is the drill, folks—because fixing Grub is so much fun, it's practically a hobby at this point:

  1. Boot into linux manually navigating to the grub file in the bios settings.
  2. After successfully loggiing into the account, run the following command to know the efi boot order.
sudo efibootmgr
  1. Once you see the list, identify the grub entry and the Windows Bootloader entry. Use that to set the efi boot order.
# In my previous round of fixing the order, the following was what worked for me.
# This might change in the future. If it changes, I don't know why yet.
sudo efibootmgr -o 0002,0007,0000
  1. Reboot to confirm!

That's it folks. The show's over. Go home before Windows throws another curveball. We'll do this again in three months. Or maybe next week. Who knows?