UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

jaydoc · 2013-12-10 04:01:35

Hi all

I have an ASRock z77 extreme4 motherboard with UEFI enabled. Disks are partitioned as gpt. Disk configuration is as follows:

sda1 - recovery
sda2- EFI boot shared between Win and Arch
sda3 - MS reserved partition
sda4 - Windows install
sda5- arch-root
sda6- arch-home

and a few other partitions

Both Windows and Arch were installed in UEFI mode - with Grub2 installed as boot loader. everything went well at first reboot - booted to arch grub menu, chose arch and booted into it. With next boot chose Windows and it booted fine. But with next reboot, system boots straight to Windows instead of booting to the grub menu. This happens everytime after I boot into windows, even after I used efibootmgr as root in arch to set the boot order to default first to arch-grub followed by windows boot manager.

Google led me to this page: Opensuse-dual-boot

Is it possible that sharing EFI between Windows and Linux is what leads to this problem? Is there any one else here with similar issues/solutions/workarounds?

Thanks

WonderWoofy · 2013-12-10 05:23:20

Maybe it is disregarding the nvram and falling back to the "default" position. This is \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI according to spec, but I've heard of firmwares that will only boot that other ms spot as well. But I don't know precisely what that path is since I don't use windows.

brain0 · 2013-12-10 10:16:20

Of course, Windows has the power to change your boot order. In my experience, Windows 7 leaves it alone, but you never know what stupid things Windows does. Other than that, your firmware may be stupid and simply always prefer Windows.

WonderWoofy · 2013-12-10 15:04:14

brain0 wrote:

Of course, Windows has the power to change your boot order. In my experience, Windows 7 leaves it alone, but you never know what stupid things Windows does. Other than that, your firmware may be stupid and simply always prefer Windows.

This is an excellent summary of the potential failures you may be experiencing.

jaydoc · 2013-12-10 16:19:01

More googling led me to this article. notes-on-dual-boot-troubles

My problem seems to be no.3 on that list. So it looks like two efi partitions is the likely solution. Will test it out later tomorrow and update my results here.

mcloaked · 2013-12-10 19:21:34

jaydoc wrote:

More googling led me to this article. notes-on-dual-boot-troubles
My problem seems to be no.3 on that list. So it looks like two efi partitions is the likely solution. Will test it out later tomorrow and update my results here.

The url you quoted does not exist - but maybe the one you are referring to is http://nwrickert2.wordpress.com/2013/05 … and-linux/ ?

srs5694 · 2013-12-10 19:27:14

Windows seems to occasionally set its own boot loader to the top of the boot list whenever it boots. I don't know what triggers this misbehavior, but based on public Internet reports and correspondence I've had with sufferers of this problem, it can usually be corrected via the "bcdedit" command in Windows. To do this, open an Administrator Command Prompt window and type the following command:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\arch\grubx64.efi

Change "\EFI\arch\grubx64.efi" to whatever your GRUB (or other LInux) boot loader is called.

jaydoc · 2013-12-11 06:53:21

@mcloaked - yep, that was the webpage I wanted to link to..!

@srs5694 - I haven't tried that yet. Will let you know how it went

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-12-10 04:01:35

UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#2 2013-12-10 05:23:20

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#3 2013-12-10 10:16:20

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#4 2013-12-10 15:04:14

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#5 2013-12-10 16:19:01

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#6 2013-12-10 19:21:34

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#7 2013-12-10 19:27:14

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

#8 2013-12-11 06:53:21

Re: UEFI, windows arch dual boot - defaults to windows with every boot

Board footer