Question Linux/Win 11 dual boot issue

[OnagaCat]

I have Mint 21.3 and Win 11 dual booted on a 500G NVMe drive. The Leveno PC also has a 120G SATA SDD drive installed. Somehow both drives have a Windows boot manager on them - I do not know how that happened. Both OS will boot and work fine but I have to use F12 to select which drive to use. If I select Windows on the SDD drive Win11 starts and runs. If I select Windows on the NVMe drive it will not start and I get an error window telling me insert a drive and restart. If I select Ubuntu on the NVMe drive the normal GNU Grub 2.06 screen comes up and I can enter Mint from it. The GNU Grub screen has Mint and both the Windows managers but only the Windows manager on the SDD works.

So I guess I have a good Windows boot on the SDD and the one on the NVMe is bad? I would like to take the SDD out of the PC and use the one NVMe drive which has both OS on it but I can't boot Windows from it. Is there a way I can do that without having to re-install anything? I have tried repair from the Win11 boot thumb drive and also repairing Grub from the Mint boot thumb drive with no luck.

 

[Grobe]

Somehow both drives have a Windows boot manager on them - I do not know how that happened.

Because whenever you install any OS, only the storage device you intend to install the OS onto should be connected to the motherboard.

You simply forgot to disconnect the ssd you didn't intend to use as OS drive.

 

[OnagaCat]

Because whenever you install any OS, only the storage device you intend to install the OS onto should be connected to the motherboard.

You simply forgot to disconnect the ssd you didn't intend to use as OS drive.

Makes sense, how can I correct it?

 

[Grobe]

Makes sense, how can I correct it?

Ok, this is unfortunately over my head since I have never tried to rectify like this (I would have to make a similar setup and try for myself before I suggest this to you). Also, I don't know the details about your system.
The only thing I can say for sure is manipulating boot sectors and moving grub may potentially cause the OS not be able to boot properly, so having backup of important files are highly recommended.

However - I'd recommend you create a user profile over on the Linux Mint official home page:

Linux Mint Forums - Index page

Ask this question over there (or any Linux forum for that sake), and I'm sure there are skilled people that can help you out.
Btw - please make a link to whatever forum thread you create on a Linux specific web site so that it's helpful to others that face similar issues.

The easiest solution is to simply re-install both OS while the secondary ssd are disconnected - so none of the OS'es will try to put it's boot loaders on that device. Secondary ssd may be re-connected only after both OS'es are installed.

 

[OnagaCat]

I have the same question posted on the Linux forum, no answers yet.

 

[Grobe]

I have the same question posted on the Linux forum, no answers yet.

link ?

[edit]
This one I presume ?
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=423987

Well, thing is dual boot issues AND issue with interweaved boot sectors/grup is difficult to fix, and the risk of something gets broken is quite high.

 

[lantis3]

I also have a lot of issues doing dual boot or multiboot with UEFI laptop & mini PC. I couldn't even install different version of Windows on the same drive on different partitions. I don't have any issue doing the same with old ATX machine with BIOS / UEFI-CSM or inside VM.

I have no intention to tear down the laptop since I don't have the tiny screw driver bit that's needed.

 

[LinuxDevice]

I won't guarantee it, but normally if you tell a running system to install GRUB again, then it will detect other o/s's and the detected version will work on both. You might need to name which disk you are installing to. If it fails, things could be unbootable for the Windows side, but Linux would have repair possibilities if that happened. If you have a way to back up Windows before starting, then this would be lower risk. I personally would tell Linux to install the bootloader again to the current GRUB drive, then use F12 to get to it (meaning you don't touch the Windows bootloader on the other disk), and see if the Windows entry works now from that drive. If this succeeds, then it pretty much means you would be safe to install the same GRUB command to the Windows drive.

Caveat: Both drives should be a GPT partition scheme. If you somehow have mixed older BIOS mode and GPT mode (Windows 11 requires GPT), then it would not work so well. To find out if this is the case, boot to Linux, and go to a command prompt. If your drive is "/dev/sda", then this non-destructive read-only operation would be:
sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda

Repeat that on both drives. You should see this if GPT:
"Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT."

 

[OnagaCat]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try grub repair with Linux with the SSD drive disabled and see if that works. My main concern is to not lose the Linux part because that's my main OS. If I have to re-install Win 11 that's fine because I don't use it that much. Both drives are GPT.