Hi,
I have installed EndeavourOS on a 8 years old Alienware18. I am using btrfs and grub.
I wish to install Windows 10 on the same computer because I need softwares that run better with Windows.
I find a lot of tutorials on the net explaining how to dual boot however they suppose Windows is installed first. In my case EndeavourOS is installed first.
As I don’t want to mess up everything, I would appreciate any suggestions.
Thank you.
Free up some space on your disk for Windows. Leave it unformatted/unallocated.
Remove the esp and boot flag from EnOS’ EFI System Pertition.
Launch Windows’ installer and point it to that unallocated space. Install Windows.
Caution:
Backup your valuable files from your EnOS. Any disk manipulation, installation etc. might carry a certain risk, however little. Better to be on the safe side.
Disclaimer:
I have installed in the same way as described above but it was quite a long ago. Back then it worked fine for me. I can’t speak to Windows 11 and if there has been any changes to the way its installer work now.
I have EndeavourOS installed on a 256 SSD. Does it mean that I have to create another partition on the same SSD and to leave this new partition unformatted/unallocated?
As for Caution and Disclaimer, yes, I will be careful. I will do first a full image of my SSD before any manipulation, using Redobackup http://redorescue.com/
If you have more than one disk so perhaps you could use the other one.
If not then yes, you would need to shrink your current system partition to make space for Windows.
Don’t create a partition. Leave the space unallocated.
At any rate, I would remove the above mentioned flags from EnOS’ ESP. Windows’ installer tends to look for a partition flagged as esp and if it finds one, it will use it as the location for its boot files, instead of creating a separate one. It shouldn’t overwrite what is already in there but there is a tiny risk. There have been “reported” cases, so you never know.
Great!
Ok, thank you. I will do this tomorrow then.
Good luck and take care!
Yes, exactly.
Double/Right click on it, choose Manage Flags and uncheck the boot flag. Apply the operation in the tool bar. It will show as msfdata afterwards.
Install Windows into that 128.52 Gio, non alloué space.
It should create its own ESP and put its bootloader in there.
In the case that it still uses the currently existent ESP and also overwrites its content, make sure to have an EnOS live usb handy so we can install Grub again from the live session using arch-chroot.
Thank you. So I just installed Windows 10, and after a few reboots (Windows asked to reboot a few times), Windows is up and running.
I haven’t tried yet to boot EndeavourOS, but I assume it is still working. I imagine I just have to select EndeavourOS in the boot sequence and put it up/first in the boot sequence (as I do when I want to boot from a usb key using Ventoy)…
Now Windows doesn’t recognize my NVIDIA GPUs 
but I imagine I have to go to a Windows forum to ask for help…
Still one more thing, do I have to re-check boot and esp?
Glad you got it working!
Yest, I think so. That place should be occupied by Windows Boot Manager now.
If you like, you could make a minor change to Grub so that it will pick up Windows and you could boot one or the other system from Grub’s boot menu.
In reality, those flags won’t be needed after installation. You could put them back though if you want.
In case of Windows, my experience is the contrary when I had removed those flags, its update didn’t go through all the way.
I am afraid I don’t have any experience with that to be of any help.
Perhaps other forum members might be able to help you. Or a Windows’s forum as you said.
Wish you luck in either case!
Yes, I would like to do so. How could I do that please? Can it cause problems later? When updating one of the OS? I am using snapper-support btrfs-assistant for snapshots, snapshots that do appear on the Grub.
As for Windows, now my NVIDIA drivers are recognized. I could install Davinci Resolve and it’s working fine (that’s the reason for me to dual boot with Windows, as I was unsuccessfully fighting to use Resolve on EndeavourOS, NVIDIA drivers causing difficulties).
Make sure you have the following line in /etc/default/grub and it is uncommented, that is there is no # in the beginning of the line:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
It should be near the bottom of that file.
Then you would need to regenerate your grub.cfg by running the following command:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
This should add the Window’s Boot Manager as a boot option to the Grub’s boot menu.
It shouldn’t in principle.
There have been some reports from time to time that a Windows’ update had overwritten ESP when this had been shared between the two systems.
However the way you have set it up now, each system should have its own ESP and consequently that risk is practically eliminated.
You could verify that you indeed have two ESPs on your disk, one for each system.
Good to hear that!
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