Arch Linux

decryptedepsilon

Member

Registered: 2014-03-17

Posts: 9

Windows 8.1 dual boot rEFInd

Hi Everyone,

Here's what I have done with my Intel NUC. I have a 480 GB mSATA SSD and 1 TB 2.5" SATA HDD and this is my partition layout

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sda1   8:1    0 931.5G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   0 447.1G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   300M  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0   100M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sdb3   8:19   0   128M  0 part 
├─sdb4   8:20   0 199.5G  0 part 
├─sdb5   8:21   0    50G  0 part /
├─sdb6   8:22   0    16G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sdb7   8:23   0 181.1G  0 part /home

I installed Windows 8.1 and it created the first three partitions where /dev/sdb2 was the FAT32 EFI partition. I chose rEFInd as it seemed easy to me which auto detects the operating systems. During Arch installation, I mounted it on /mnt/boot/efi and voila. Everything works fine.

The problem however is Windows 8.1 automatic updates. I do want to keep updates on but it seems to detect somehow that /boot/efi/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi is not the only boot entry and there are some other entries. After every 2 weeks or so (or whenever automatic updates kicks in on the EFI partition), my rEFInd options are gone and Windows boot directly. I can easily load up my installation USB, mount everything again and just chroot to run 'refind-install' once again and voila everything works. I want to know if something similar has been happening to any other users out there and is there any way to prevent Windows 8.1 to auto select only the Microsoft bootloader.

I'm also renaming bootx64.efi to just bootx64 because I do not want that additional entry in rEFInd. Could that be the reason?

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: Windows 8.1 dual boot rEFInd

The only way I know of preventing it is to turn auto-update off. Eiher that or just boot up very two weeks and fix the issue.

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."