Windows 11 apparently wiped EOS EFI partition

Have(or should I say had) my wife’s Lenovo laptop set up in Windows 10 / EOS dual boot. Win 10 kept offering to install Win 11, I was curious about Win 11 so I allowed the upgrade, all went well. Yesterday I went to check both Win 11 and EOS to see if they needed updates, EOS’ grub menu did not appear, instead the laptop boots immediately to Windows 11. :rage:
I was disgusted, didn’t do anything[yet] as my wife is the frequent user(play music, does Zoom).
Eventually I’m going to restore EOS, the ext4 partition appears intact, just the EFI is gone.
This occurrence has further eroded my respect for M$, I guess it was foolish to think that at some point as a large tech company they would learn to “play well” with the others.

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What do you expect from known spyware / bloatware…of course it wipes legit software :laughing:

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Did you have a separate ESP (EFI System Partition) for EnOS or you shared one with Windows?

It seems unlikely that a Windows upgrade would wipe another partition on the disk but it is probable that it would wipe the bootloader of another distro in case of shared ESP.

There was this recent case of EnOS bootloader being deleted by a BIOS upgrade for example:

Also, could it be the case that it has only changed the boot priority in the firmware settings?
Have you already checked it in the BIOS/UEFI settings?

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This is actually part of the reason why I’m making an effort to cut over to a Linux desktop. Microsoft has just gone too far with Windows 11, and I refuse to even tacitly approve of it anymore.

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This has been the case since forever. Windows updates will wipe out anything other than Windows boot loaders. Firmware/UEFI updates will remove anything other than Windows boot entries.

The usual way around this is to make sure the two things are as separate as they can be, then when the boot entry is lost it’s easy enough to use a chroot to restore it.

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I have not used Boot repair on an Arch based distro, but did use it to set up my boot partition with a Windows 11 dual boot. Been dual booting since Win 7 and have experienced no boot loader overwrites. The real test will come with the next build of Win 11.

https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/
Status Check Commands Win 11:
MOK Utilities
mokutil --sb-state

Secure Boot enabled
ls /sys/firmware/efi

TPM Info
dmesg | grep -i tpm

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Most probably Windows assumed it had the top entry and wiped it. You should be able to load EnOS GRUB via a “boot from file” option if your UEFI has such a function or by adding the boot entry with efibootmgr.

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Pretty sure they know it’s possible someone is dual booting. More likely they figure it’s a good excuse to break some “other” OS.

Windows really soured me too. The whole point of making Microsoft your “domain admin” just so you can configure the desktop…um, no. I’d sooner set up my own DC. Or get Endeavou working for all my desktop tasks…which is coming right along now that I gave up on the Lenovo C930.

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I have two drives, one for Windows and one for Linux.

Before Windows install, I unplugged the SATA cable from the Linux drive and by doing that, now I have two UEFI partitions, one for each OS in each drive.

The only downside is that you need two drives.
This is in my opinion, the best approach

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Definitely the rock solid approach.

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I don’t recall if I set up an EOS ESP or shared the existing one. I got into W11’s Disk Mgmt and didn’t see a seperate ESP. In the BIOS the EOS boot option is missing…

It occurs to me that my wife could do her Zoom and listen to her music on her iPad. Maybe I’ll repossess the laptop and set up her iPad for her stuff. :wink:

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Then it is highly probable that only the EnOS’ bootloader has been overwritten.
This should have a quite straightforwards fix by using your Live USB, chrooting into your installed system and re-installing the bootloader.

You could have a look at the following articles and if anything is unclear just ask away:

https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/arch-chroot-for-efi-uefi-systems/2021/03/

https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/repair-a-non-booting-grub/2021/03/

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is coming worse with windows 11 and bitlocker ( TPM 2.0 )

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Why am I not surprised…

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Apparently this is the default! behaviour on Win11 Pro and derivatives of Pro. Can be mitigated by a GRUB->Systemd-boot->Set BootNext chain or, errm, disabling Bitlocker.

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After I fix my EOS EFI partition I’m going to disable Bitlocker alright, I’m wiping the whole windows mess of and make that a storage partition. :wink:

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You have my sympathies. How big was your EFI partition? Maybe it just ran out of space. I am running Windows11 & EOS dual-booted with a 500MB partition, and that seems to work fine. I was fortunate, and was able to upgrade to Windows 11 before installing EOS. I can only hope that I don’t encounter the same problem down the road.

It is there? In liveusb what shows efibootmgr ?

try grub rescue 2 efi mode. If you booted in linux, report back for how to restore boot settings

https://www.supergrubdisk.org/

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totally agree, that is the way to go !!

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