Dual boot win 11 just infested by boot?

Support
1

what i did

1 i installed manajaro on a drive the default stuff
2 i connected a second drive
3 i installed win11 on that drive while the manjaro drive was connected

during win 11 install i got presented with

drive 1 partition 300mb
drive 1 the second partition
drive 2 un allocated

obviously i picked the second drive

if i go to /boot/efi/EFI i got

ls -h1 /boot/efi/EFI/
boot
Manjaro
Microsoft

1 boot has bootx64.efi

2 Mnajaro has grubx64.efi

3 Microsoft has 2 folders Boot Recovery


ls -h1 Boot/
BCD
BCD.LOG
BCD.LOG1
BCD.LOG2
bg-BG
bootmgfw.efi
bootmgr.efi
BOOTSTAT.DAT
boot.stl
CIPolicies
cs-CZ
da-DK
de-DE
el-GR
en-GB
en-US
es-ES
es-MX
et-EE
fi-FI
Fonts
fr-CA
fr-FR
hr-HR
hu-HU
it-IT
ja-JP
kd_02_10df.dll
kd_02_10ec.dll
kd_02_1137.dll
kd_02_14e4.dll
kd_02_15b3.dll
kd_02_1969.dll
kd_02_19a2.dll
kd_02_1af4.dll
kd_02_8086.dll
kd_07_1415.dll
kd_0C_8086.dll
kdnet_uart16550.dll
kdstub.dll
ko-KR
lt-LT
lv-LV
memtest.efi
nb-NO
nl-NL
pl-PL
pt-BR
pt-PT
qps-ploc
Resources
ro-RO
ru-RU
sk-SK
sl-SI
sr-Latn-RS
sv-SE
tr-TR
uk-UA
winsipolicy.p7b
zh-CN
zh-TW

and the recovery holder

ls -h1 Recovery/
BCD
BCD.LOG
BCD.LOG1
BCD.LOG2

wtf is going on, why i got efi inside efi? and if i want to boot win 11 in the boot menu i got something like /drive1/windows

is there a way to make a new boot for windows and keep things separated?

2

Hi @KA6T5Q,

Windows is a greedy attetion-hog and doesn’t like to share. That’s not to say it won’t but it doesn’t like it and always tries to take over the drives, booting, everything.

For dual-booting look at this, it should help:

1 Like
3

Definitely no expert but if I was installing manjaro and windows on separate drives i would disconnect the manjaro drive while i installed windows on the other drive. Once windows is installed you can reconnect the manjaro drive and either update grub or just boot to each os from bios

3 Likes
4

so the solution would be

1 delete the microsoft folder from boot :thinking:
2 disconnect and leave only the drive for win connected
3 reinstall win on that drive

when it come to boot just pick the disk from boot menu F11

5

That sound like a bad idea, but I don’t have a better one, so instead of removing it, just move it to a different directory so that you can restore it should something go awry.

Or better yet:

  1. Disconnect/remove the Windows disc.
  2. Fix your boot order in the BIOS/UIEFI.
  3. Restore the GRUB boot loader:

5. Disconnect/remove the Manjaro disc, so that Windows can’t get its grubby hands bytes on it.
6. Install Windows on the disc.
7. Shutdown after everything’s installed.
8. Reconnect the Manjaro disc.
9. Ensure the boot order in BIOS/UEFI is correct.
10. Boot into Manjaro and follow the tutorial:

That’s how I’d do it if I was a masochist trying to dual-boot with Windows.

6

If you are referring to /boot/efi/EFI then I think it’s likely you have a fundamental misunderstanding;

/boot/efi is not a directory structure, it’s a mountpoint :eyes: – essentially a symbolic link which links to the EFI System Partition (ESP) – hereunder referred to as $ESP.

When you ask for a directory of /boot/efi the mountpoint is first followed to the $ESP and the contents are displayed – the single /EFI directory;

EFI

If you ask for a directory of /boot/efi/EFI the mountpoint is followed and the content of the $ESP/EFI directory is shown:

BOOT
Manjaro
Microsoft

And if you ask for a directory of /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT the mountpoint is followed and the content of $ESP/EFI/BOOT is shown:

bootx64.efi

Using the mountpoint in the path is the easiest way to access directories on the $ESP via terminal, for example when wishing to perform basic file operations such as cp or mv, or simply asking for a directory listing:

sudo ls /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT

So, that briefly explains;

Regards.

OS Separation is especially important while installing each OS, as it helps avoid clumsy situations such as what you have now experienced.

The trick is to first disconnect the other SSD;

I’d suggest installing Windows first (with the intended Manjaro SSD disconnected). In this way Windows will install it’s own $ESP to the Windows SSD, and it will be completely self-contained.

Next, disconnect the Windows SSD and install Manjaro to the second SSD. Once installation is complete (and Manjaro is functioning as expected) you can reconnect the Windows SSD.

Important:- Boot to your computer BIOS and make sure that the UEFI OS on the Manjaro SSD is selected first in boot priority. Once that’s done, reboot and os-prober should detect the Windows UEFI boot files on the Windows SSD, and offer it as a boot option.

Easy, right? :smile_cat:

Someone should make a tutorial – wait, someone did :point_down::

I hope this is helpful.

Regards.