In a Manjaro dual booted with Windows why is grub not displaying at startup?

I have dual booted Manjaro with Windows 10. I followed other forums with the similar issue but couldn’t get much help. This is what I have tried after following other forums:

The partition flags are set to:
efi = boot, esp
swap = swap
root = no flags
home = no flags

When I run efibootmgr I get:
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0010,0011,0014,0013,0015,0012,0016,0000,0017,0019,001A,001B,0018
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0001* Manjaro
Boot0010 Setup
Boot0011 Boot Menu
Boot0012* Removable Drive
Boot0013* Hard Drive
Boot0014* USB Storage Device
Boot0015* CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Boot0016* Network
Boot0017* Onboard NIC
Boot0018* Onboard NIC
Boot0019 Diagnostics
Boot001A Peripheral Device setting (OPROM setting)
Boot001B Change boot mode setting

In the /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

I opened windows and disabled “fast boot” as well.

The grub is visible when I press F12 and go into the boot options and open Manjaro from there. There is a fully functional grub menu present. The issue is that when I boot the system normally, the grub never shows up. It by default boots into Manjaro as it is on top of windows in UEFI boot order. Pressing “Esc” when booting to force open grub also does not work. There is a blank screen and I am guessing there is a grub there because, I can navigate to Windows and Manjaro by pressing up and down keys. It’s just that it does not display.

I’ve also noticed that when I run “efibootmgr”, Manjaro is below windows boot manager in the output. Could that be the issue? I am not very familiar with Linux systems, hence, I don’t know much about that. Any help is very much appreciated.

edit /etc/default/grub
so that the timeout is -1, and then grub wont do anything automatically,
and will just wait for you to do something

GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1

and then run

sudo update-grub

to apply the settings, and then the grub menu should configure itself
and you should see it as you expect it to after restart

after that consider altering EFI so windows points to grub when it starts instead of it’s default

(https://askubuntu.com/questions/838780/windows-10-changes-uefi-boot-order-every-time#869099)

This is how you want to solve the problem

changing the windows entry in efi to point to grubs location
similarly to your entry for manjaro

…make sure that Windows does not use its own bootmgfw.efi file again, but rather grubx64.efi

There are different ways to solve the problem

IMO, in my opinion, that’s the ideal way to do it.

So, using efibootmgr to achieve this would look like this…

Check efibootmgr for it’s listed entries and with verbose output to see the filepaths
designated for each option to point to on startup

sudo efibootmgr -v

and you should see an entry for windows…“Windows Boot Manager”
and an entry for Manjaro, with the file designated that the options point to

for windows it’s /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
for manjaro it’s /EFI/Manjaro/grubx64.efi

So to change the file that windows points to, to grub you would use this command

sudo efibootmgr -L “Windows Boot Manager” -l “/EFI/Manjaro/grubx64.efi”

Now, Windows should not change the EFI settings anymore and on every boot, GRUB is the default. As GRUB ideally already identified your Windows OS, it also contains its value in the grub settings.
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Did you regenerate the main configuration file afterwards?

Hi @HammerNix ,

Your help is very much appreciated.

I set the value in /etc/default/grub

GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1

I also ran this afterwards

sudo update-grub

I also ran the command

sudo efibootmgr -L “Windows Boot Manager” -l “/EFI/Manjaro/grubx64.efi”

as @maycne.sonahoz mentioned, I even ran this command

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

It seems the issue still persists.

What are the color settings in /etc/default/grub" (around line 47)?
Maybe there is something messed up…

My settings:

GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL=“light-gray/black”
GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT=“green/black”

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What is your partitioning?

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@FeB

That seems to be the same as your settings

@maycne.sonahoz

Here is my partitioning:

lsblk -fa

NAME    FSTYPE   FSVER LABEL      UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0   squashfs 4.0                                                         0   100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/atom/282
loop1   squashfs 4.0                                                         0   100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/16010
loop2   squashfs 4.0                                                         0   100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core20/1518
loop3                                                                                 
loop4                                                                                 
loop5                                                                                 
loop6                                                                                 
loop7                                                                                 
sda                                                                                   
├─sda1  ntfs           Recovery   2CA6FFFBA6FFC2FE                                    
├─sda2  vfat     FAT32            0E00-1B19                                           
├─sda3                                                                                
├─sda4  ntfs                      B6180A041809C3F9                                    
├─sda5  ntfs                      2E4CD43D4CD3FD91                                    
├─sda6                                                                                
├─sda7  ntfs           New Volume 243A24593A242A6E                                    
├─sda8  vfat     FAT32 EFI        1841-E207                             510.7M     0% /boot/efi
├─sda9  ext4     1.0   home       9a92b972-c864-4fd7-83ff-87e217e60e55     95G     3% /home
├─sda10 ext4     1.0   root       68557680-1f9a-4d57-91b8-12ae5954f938   20.9G    33% /
└─sda11 swap     1     swap       290bdfd0-c153-4285-8c36-f4abf0da58de                [SWAP]

LANG=C sudo parted -l

Model: ATA KINGSTON SA400S3 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 480GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  524MB  523MB   ntfs            Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      524MB   628MB  104MB   fat32           EFI system partition          boot, esp
 3      628MB   645MB  16.8MB                  Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      645MB   209GB  208GB   ntfs            Basic data partition          msftdata
 5      209GB   210GB  605MB   ntfs                                          hidden, diag
 6      210GB   210GB  1049kB                  Basic data partition          msftdata
 7      210GB   319GB  109GB   ntfs            Basic data partition          msftdata
 8      319GB   319GB  537MB   fat32                                         boot, esp
11      319GB   330GB  10.5GB  linux-swap(v1)                                swap
10      330GB   367GB  37.1GB  ext4
 9      367GB   480GB  113GB   ext4

Do i see two EFI partitions?
:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

the 1-st choice in your system is windows boot manager/ because of that you didn’t see your grub menu
change the prioriry, put manjaro on the 1-st place
you can do it with bootice

@maycne.sonahoz

First off I just want to say that is community is so friendly and helpful. I thought it was going to be a nightmare like stack overflow :laughing:

Back to the issue at hand. Yeah, it seems there are two EFI partitions. You think that might be the issue? Is there a way to solve that?

Thanks a lot.

UPDATE: I just restarted the computer, pressed F12 to open up boot options and selected Manjaro. As you would recall that booting up this way displayed the grub. Previously in the grub, there was a “windows boot manager” option. now it seems to have gone.

@scorpp13

Thanks for the tip. I opened BOOTICE > EUFI > Edit Boot Entries option and it seems Manjaro is on the top most position.

The Boot entries are:

Manjaro
Setup
Boot Menu
USB Storage Device
Hard Drive
CD/DVD/CD-RW/Drive
Removable Device
Network
Windows Boot Manager
Onboard NIC
Diagnostics
Peripheral Device Settings (OPROM setting)
Change Boot Mode Setting
Onboard NIC

Theoretically it is not an issue, though i usually see those on multiple drives rather than on the same one… :person_shrugging:


Re-reading your issue, i wonder if the issue comes from theming.

Manjaro provides a Grub that is visually customized. Do you still have that theme configured?

cat /etc/default/grub | grep GRUB_THEME
pacman -Q grub-theme-manjaro

@maycne.sonahoz

$ cat /etc/default/grub | grep GRUB_THEME 
GRUB_THEME="/usr/share/grub/themes/manjaro/theme.txt"
$ pacman -Q grub-theme-manjaro 
grub-theme-manjaro 20.2-12

Looks like I have theme configured. I can see a grub menu when I press F12, go into boot menu and enter Manjaro from there.

Just checking: are you sure that is the Grub menu, and not the EFI boot menu (not to be mistaken with BIOS)?

@maycne.sonahoz

Yeah I’m sure that’s the grub menu.

Looks something like this ( This is not my grub menu)

Simply look inside /etc/default/grub

If it looks like:

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Manjaro"

you will have a visible grub-menu
(root-rights recommended,
like sudo nano /etc/default/grub
followed by sudo update-grub)

@GaVenga

Thank you so much for the help but, we already checked that. Even now I can confirm that those values are the same with the exception that

GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1

But, that shouldn’t really cause the issue as it was already set to 5 when the grub was not working.

Appreciate the help.

GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1 makes the menu invisible…
Could it be the BIOS / UEFI bootorder ???
You start from the wrong Disk…
So start from the Manjaro partition Disk and not from the Windows partition Disk!
Change the boot-order in your BIOS.
.
You wrote:
The grub is visible when I press F12 and go into the boot options and open Manjaro from there. There is a fully functional grub menu present

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@GaVenga I went in and changed the

GRUB_TIMEOUT=5

Did not change anything except the grub has a time limit of 5 seconds. It is still not visible.

as for the Boot order in UEFI options, Manjaro is already at the top of the order:

IMG-20220626-000958

I noticed that the output for

efibootmgr

has manjaro below windows boot manager. Could that be the issue?

BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0010,0011,0014,0013,0015,0012,0016,0000,0018,0019,001A,001B,0017
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0001* Manjaro
Boot0010  Setup
Boot0011  Boot Menu
Boot0012* Removable Drive
Boot0013* Hard Drive
Boot0014* USB Storage Device
Boot0015* CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Boot0016* Network
Boot0017* Onboard NIC
Boot0018* Onboard NIC
Boot0019  Diagnostics
Boot001A  Peripheral Device setting (OPROM setting)
Boot001B  Change boot mode setting