Dual booting Win10/Mint

By Somnus,
in Linux/Unix

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Somnus
Posted

I have three drives in my system:

 

C: 512MB SSD

D: 256SSD

E: 2TB 7200 RPM drive

 

I've cleared off the D drive completely and have formatted it. What I'd like to do is install LInux Mint to the D drive and dual boot Win10 and Mint 18.

 

What's the best way to accomplish this? Do I use the standard Mint installer and just guide it to install on D? Should I use a different boot manager?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

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Mindovermaster
Posted (edited)

You can choose to install Mint on the D: drive. Will leave C: alone. Grub should be able to pick up Windows 10 just fine.

 

Edit: Only thing you might need to do is put your 256 drive first in boot order, in BIOS.

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Somnus
  • Author
Posted

I have it installed, but I can't boot to it. I've tried putting the 256 drive first in boot order as well. Windows 10 constantly fast boots it seems, even with it disabled. 

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Steven P.
  • Founder
Posted
6 minutes ago, Somnus said:

I have it installed, but I can't boot to it. I've tried putting the 256 drive first in boot order as well. Windows 10 constantly fast boots it seems, even with it disabled. 

msconfig and boot tab, does it also show the Mint install? Failing that try EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ (get the Free version)

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patseguin
  • Global Moderator
Posted
20 hours ago, Somnus said:

I have it installed, but I can't boot to it. I've tried putting the 256 drive first in boot order as well. Windows 10 constantly fast boots it seems, even with it disabled. 

I'd like to do know how you get it done because I have this same problem. I tried to get a dual boot of Mint set up but my computer fast boots to Win 10 no matter what I do.

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Somnus
  • Author
Posted
On 10/17/2017 at 3:02 PM, Steven P. said:

msconfig and boot tab, does it also show the Mint install? Failing that try EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ (get the Free version)

Yes it shows it in the msconfig boot tab. I tried EasyBCD, and still no joy. I tried a dual boot of Win10/Ubuntu, and I can boot to both. Mint 17 or 18 will not boot in a dual setup. 

5 hours ago, patseguin said:

I'd like to do know how you get it done because I have this same problem. I tried to get a dual boot of Mint set up but my computer fast boots to Win 10 no matter what I do.

I'll keep this thread updated. Ubuntu will boot, Mint won't. There must be something wrong with the installer or the way it configs grub. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Radium
Posted
On 2017-10-19 at 1:36 AM, Somnus said:

Yes it shows it in the msconfig boot tab. I tried EasyBCD, and still no joy. I tried a dual boot of Win10/Ubuntu, and I can boot to both. Mint 17 or 18 will not boot in a dual setup. 

I'll keep this thread updated. Ubuntu will boot, Mint won't. There must be something wrong with the installer or the way it configs grub. 

Since you are talking about Fast Boot, I assume that you're booting Windows in EFI mode. Windows can't be downgraded to legacy boot. So don't fiddle too much with booting since it might break Windows booting, so just keep Fast Boot disabled.

  1. In Windows, open the Administrative Tools in the control panel.
    Open Computer Management
    Go to Disk Management
  2. Does your Mint drive have a EFI System Partition?
  3. Right click on your Mint disk and select Properties and go to the tab called Volumes and read what it says about Partition type.

If your Mint disk uses GPT and has a EFI system partition then you should be able to change the boot order in EFI firmware setup or using EasyBCD.

If your Mint disk does not use GPT and or a EFI system partition isn't there then you need to reinstall Mint in EFI mode. If this was the case, Grub might not have detected Windows properly either.

If Mint wasn't installed in EFI mode, was Windows installed in EFI mode? Check the same things I mentioned but for the Windows.

 

EFI booting:

  • The firmware has a list of entries with bootable EFI programs and their parameters. Operating systems add their bootloader or kernel to this list.
  • As a fallback, "\\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi" (or bootx32.efi on early x86 Macs) is executed.
  • For removable media, the EFI firmware looks for block devices that use GPT and looks for an ESP with the fallback bootloader. This is the bootloader that you'll load when you boot into OS installers and other tools on removable media.

Interesting things:

  • Motherboards do not come with legacy and EFI firmware. They come with pure EFI firmware with CSMs that enables you to boot legacy systems. Crappy firmware is crappy either way.
  • EFI doesn't utilize harddrive boot order at all, it loads EFI programs (.efi files), not boot sectors.
  • The operating system can add, remove and reorder EFI boot entries.
  • The EFI subsystem is hidden when booting in legacy mode (CSM).
  • Grub exists in two forms: Legacy (MBR) multi stage loader and as a EFI program.
  • EFI programs are stored on EFI System Partitions (ESP) and the UEFI standard requires that the firmware supports VFAT, so the ESP is almost always VFAT (Macs are the exception, because Apple).
  • Booting drives larger than 2.2 TB in legacy mode is nothing but a hack (no standard). UEFI and GPT uses straight out 64 bit LBA as opposed to the 32 bit LBA availible on a MBR that limits us to 2.2 TB / 2 TiB / 2,199,023,255,552 bytes since LBA came long after MBR was a de facto standard.
  • On Linux, if you've booted Linux in EFI mode, /sys/firmware/efi/ will be availible and contain various EFI stuff that one should not touch manually.
  • In Linux, the EFI boot order is manipulated using the command line tool "efibootmgr". You can also set the boot entry that should be used for the next boot. Grub uses efibootmgr to add itself to the list.
  • The Linux kernel can be booted directly by the EFI firmware if it has been compiled with the EFI STUB, which makes it a valid EFI program.
  • When grub or another boot loader adds itself to the EFI boot order, it will put itself at the top of the list. You should be able to change the boot order from inside the firmware setup.

 

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+BudMan
  • MVC
Posted

I don't get the dual boot desire anymore.. Why would you not just run the other OS as VM on the first OS?  Then you could use both OSes at the same time..

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Unobscured Vision
Posted

Agree with @BudMan. Build a second machine, set it up next to the first one and use cross-platform software that lets you use the same KB/Mouse between the two. Systems are SO power-efficient nowadays that it's really no big deal to do this now, and it saves having to mess with SSH/VM/WINE (at least for me) when I want to game. :) 

 

No need to mess with dual-booting either, in that arrangement.

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Shiranui
Posted
On 2017/11/7 at 11:35 PM, BudMan said:

I don't get the dual boot desire anymore.. Why would you not just run the other OS as VM on the first OS?  Then you could use both OSes at the same time..

This.
Close thread now.

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  • 4 months later...
Somnus
  • Author
Posted

So this has been solved with the latest updates from Linux Mint 18.3. I was able to dual boot via the regular set up.

 

No clue as to why it wouldn't work before, but when I tried again this evening, it went as smooth as butter. In fact I'm using it as we speak.

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Mindovermaster
Posted
1 minute ago, Somnus said:

So this has been solved with the latest updates from Linux Mint 18.3. I was able to dual boot via the regular set up.

 

No clue as to why it wouldn't work before, but when I tried again this evening, it went as smooth as butter. In fact I'm using it as we speak.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Somnus
  • Author
Posted
Just now, Mindovermaster said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now I just have to figure out how to make Chrome and Firefox update automatically. The old way of adding the PPA doesn't seem to work anymore..

 

 

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Mindovermaster
Posted
Just now, Somnus said:

Now I just have to figure out how to make Chrome and Firefox update automatically. The old way of adding the PPA doesn't seem to work anymore..

 

 

Your distro should take care of that. I run Mint and I have gotten a few updates from FireFox since it released Quantum.

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Somnus
  • Author
Posted
1 minute ago, Mindovermaster said:

Your distro should take care of that. I run Mint and I have gotten a few updates from FireFox since it released Quantum.

What is your current version? Windows is on 59.01 and my Mint version is 58.02.

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Mindovermaster
Posted
27 minutes ago, Somnus said:

What is your current version? Windows is on 59.01 and my Mint version is 58.02.

Mine is 58.0.2. Linux versions and Windows versions are not in sync. AFAIK

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Unobscured Vision
Posted

I'm not a fan of snaps just yet. Some technical stuff to iron out still.

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Somnus
  • Author
Posted
On 3/20/2018 at 2:24 PM, Unobscured Vision said:

I'm not a fan of snaps just yet. Some technical stuff to iron out still.

I installed both snaps and they seem to be working well. Both just updated last night in fact, so that solved my issue. 

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