My GF recently said I can install Linux on her laptop. Then I saw Windows broke dual boot systems.
Is it safe to do a dual boot if she already has the update that broke dual booting?
Should I just figure out how to install Windows in a VM for her?
Appreciate any insight y’all can offer
it should be safe. From what I know the update only broke it as it was updating so installing a dual-boot after should be fine. You might want to test first so just install something small like mint for a test and see if it works.
Dumb title. Yes, it’s safe. Windows has nerfed boot records for any other OS since the beginning of dual-booting. Just replace the boot record.
Also, if you want to be hardcore about it, and since everything is UEFI now, just use your BIOS boot manager to control booting. Shouldn’t be a problem.
I looked at the breakdown, and I believe it’s only changing the preference for same device.
It doesn’t change the preferences but it does replace bootx64.efi which is the default bootloader executable for a drive, when the UEFI doesn’t have more specific entries. In some configurations both Windows and GRUB want to be that.
If you add a boot entry for GRUB and don’t point it to the default executable, then it won’t be affected. Until you reset the BIOS or try to use the drive in another system that is, in which case the firmware will then only know about the default executable. But it’s easy to add the boot entries back.
It should be safe, although for the future, I’d recommend installing the os to a completely separate drive and changing boot device by uefi.
this reads like you don’t make backups or don’t have a restore strategy. if the system is important enough that you worry about updates breaking it, you should make backups from time to time and have a bootable restore system on a removable medium.
