Manjaro won't boot after I booted into Windows

Support
1

Hello!

I’d like to dual boot Manjaro and Windows 11.

When I installed manjaro, I used the auto partitioning option and didn’t verify boot options to see if manjaro was there.

Everything was working fine until I booted windows again.

Since then i haven’t been able to access manjaro because it is not listed in the boot options.

When I use efibootmgr there is no manjaro option.

I know there is a partition with manjaro installed in it, but i can’t boot from it.

I trief reinstalling grub, but it didn’t work.

I tried reinstalling manjaro on the same partition using the “replace a partition” option, but i got an error massage.

What should I do? I would greatly appreciate if anyone could help me fix this.

2

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How to Request Support in this forum

Otherwise we may need to play hide and seek :wink:

Have you already :mag: for your problem in the forum ? (Wisdom lies in asking → listening → reading :wink: )

Information about your partitioning and whether you installed in EFI or BIOS mode could also be useful.

You could also use the forum’s search function to find similar, already resolved issues (of which there are plenty).

:footprints:

3

What you are describing sound a lot like you are having issues with MBR/GPT partitioning scheme. Both of your installations should use the same as the other. Either use GPT (which i recommend) or MBR (which is mostly used on older systems).

And this maybe sounds a bit harsh, but it isn’t. There is so much to say about this stuff, i would recommend you to do a bit of own research. As we can’t decide on what you use.

4

Your topic does not make much sense

OK - to my knowledge, a system with Windows 11 preinstalled (it was preinstalled, right?) will be exclusively using UEFI and GPT.

Should we understand this as you are seeing the Manjaro GRUB menu with an option to load Windows - but not Manjaro?

So you are booting a live system - then run efibootmgr to list EFI loaders - and none is shown - not even Windows?

What if you use your system’s boot override - depending on vendor Clevo F7 or Lenovo F12 or Legion F2?

5

AFAIK Manjaro doesn’t support secure boot. On the other hand Windows 11 requires secure boot (and TPM 2.0). I mean i heard you can boot Windows 11 after installation with secure boot turned off but I don’t think it is officially supported. But then I know about Windows mostly from hearsay.

6

I dual boot 11 (ok the last time it booted is an year ago but it is on the disk) and manjaro with secure boot turned off. Maybe it is a requirement on install time but not on boottime, unless one uses stuff like bitlocker.

Now, the excellent guide here

Tells one of the reasons for not booting manjaro - the windows fast startup. I take it the OP has checked this and it is not it or secure boot.

If i understand correctly, running efibootmgr from the live usb lists windows but not manjaro? And grub menu is not seen at all?
This can happen on major windows upgrades where windows silently decides to check and “fix” the boot without asking…and wipes other boot entries or files.
Unless the OP has further damaged something trying to fix things, it is a quick fix reinstalling grub from live usb.

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/GRUB/Restore_the_GRUB_Bootloader

7

I have turned off fast boot, secured boot and bitlocker.

When i run efibootmgr -v from the live usb i get the following result:

BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,2001,2005,2002,2004
Boot0000* USB CD/DVD ROM Drive (UEFI) (USB)	UsbWwid(781,5581,0,0401b55d73f0f3dd037ac7fe48de7acc07574f859299cec783a569487eec9a2eacb100000000000000000000879c3531000f1b18815581075b31135)/CDROM(1,0xa45620,0x8000)RC
      dp: 03 10 fa 00 00 00 81 07 81 55 30 00 34 00 30 00 31 00 62 00 35 00 35 00 64 00 37 00 33 00 66 00 30 00 66 00 33 00 64 00 64 00 30 00 33 00 37 00 61 00 63 00 37 00 66 00 65 00 34 00 38 00 64 00 65 00 37 00 61 00 63 00 63 00 30 00 37 00 35 00 37 00 34 00 66 00 38 00 35 00 39 00 32 00 39 00 39 00 63 00 65 00 63 00 37 00 38 00 33 00 61 00 35 00 36 00 39 00 34 00 38 00 37 00 65 00 65 00 63 00 39 00 61 00 32 00 65 00 61 00 63 00 62 00 31 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 38 00 37 00 39 00 63 00 33 00 35 00 33 00 31 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 66 00 31 00 62 00 31 00 38 00 38 00 31 00 35 00 35 00 38 00 31 00 30 00 37 00 35 00 62 00 33 00 31 00 31 00 33 00 35 00 63 00 / 04 02 18 00 01 00 00 00 20 56 a4 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 52 43
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,cccdd139-90cd-4ad1-bbad-8a401d1a20c6,0x800,0x100000)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d000000011f0100000010000000040000007fff0400
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 39 d1 cd cc cd 90 d1 4a bb ad 8a 40 1d 1a 20 c6 02 02 / 04 04 46 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 4d 00 69 00 63 00 72 00 6f 00 73 00 6f 00 66 00 74 00 5c 00 42 00 6f 00 6f 00 74 00 5c 00 62 00 6f 00 6f 00 74 00 6d 00 67 00 66 00 77 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 57 49 4e 44 4f 57 53 00 01 00 00 00 88 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 42 00 43 00 44 00 4f 00 42 00 4a 00 45 00 43 00 54 00 3d 00 7b 00 39 00 64 00 65 00 61 00 38 00 36 00 32 00 63 00 2d 00 35 00 63 00 64 00 64 00 2d 00 34 00 65 00 37 00 30 00 2d 00 61 00 63 00 63 00 31 00 2d 00 66 00 33 00 32 00 62 00 33 00 34 00 34 00 64 00 34 00 37 00 39 00 35 00 7d 00 00 00 01 1f 01 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00
Boot2001* EFI USB Device	RC
      dp: 7f ff 04 00
    data: 52 43
Boot2005* Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk	RC
      dp: 7f ff 04 00
    data: 52 43

When I first installed manjaro and rebooted, manjaro’s grub menu would load and give the choice to use manjaro or windows.

I tried running windows to see if it was working and i haven’t been able to access manjaro since. When I restarted the computer after that it booted windows automatically. I tried accessing windows boot menu by pressing F9 but manjaro isn’t listed.

I know manjaro is installed in my machine. When i run sudo fdisk -l i see it listed:

Device              Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048    1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2    1050624    1083391     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3    1083392  999799808 998716417 476.2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 1998516224 2000396287   1880064   918M Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p5  999799810 1998516223 998716414 476.2G Linux filesystem

I looked on the internet for what i should and i read i should try to reinstall grub from a live usb and add manjaro to the boot. This hasn’t worked.

I followed the wiki’s tutorial for reinstalling grub to no avail.

When i run manjaro-chroot -a, as instructed, i get an error:

grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda1.  Check your device.map.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sda1.  Check your device.map.
==> ERROR: No Linux partitions detected!

I manually mounted the partition but it still didn’t work. I ran grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=manjaro --recheck and got an error:

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
grub-install: error: /boot/efi doesn't look like an EFI partition.

I don’t know what else to do.

I hope this answers your questions and I apologize for any problems with topic, I’m very new to this.

8

I think you have neglected to mount the EFI partition before you entered chroot or it could be btrfs which would requires more consideration when mounting.

Please see

[root tip] [recovery] Basic Manjaro Linux Rescue and Recovery

9

I also bet on a btrfs filesystem that wasn’t mounted properly.

The manjaro-chroot -a only recognize ext4 filesystem but the default since some time is btrfs (yes that is stupid we know :wink:).

10

Actually, the latest .ISOs do now include a patched version of manjaro-chroot so the -a option should now work with a “standard” BTRFS installation. :wink:

11

I followed the instructions in your post and managed to add manjaro to the boot menu.

I shut down the computer and loaded manjaro from the boot options. However it is not working. After selecting manjaro in the boot menu I got an error:

error: kern/verifiers.c:grub_verifiers_open:156:premature end of file /@/boot/vmlinuz-6.18-x86_64.
error: loader/i386/linux.c:grub_cmd_initrd:1082:you need to load the kernel first.

Press any key to continue...

How do load the kernel first?

I apologize if this is a stupid question.

12

To load the kernel, you have to have a whole kernel…
Depending on how you got with that damaged file (power outage, you interrupted something in the install, damaged filesystem?) it might be easier to reformat and reinstall, you have nothing in that os anyway.

14

My thoughts @mensperdita — did you do a Manjaro update before that fateful reboot? If so, it may not have completed, hence the missing Kernel. (I suspect this is what messed upgrub, too).

The way to fix that is via manjaro-chroot -a from the (latest) Live .ISO and install a Kernel from there.

15

This may happen with /boot on btrfs. It’s because grub does not fully support btrfs, in combination with compression used in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. I would suggest the following procedure — note: this is going to be a bit of work. :backhand_index_pointing_down:

1. Boot up from the live USB, and make sure it is booting in UEFI mode.

Open a terminal window and become root within that terminal session. :backhand_index_pointing_down:

sudo -i

2. chroot into your installed system with… :backhand_index_pointing_down:

manjaro-chroot -a

Verify that everything is properly mounted where it needs to be.

If the automatic detection of `manjaro-chroot` does not work

In the instructions below, I will for the sake of this tutorial assume that…

  • your machine boots in native UEFI mode;
  • your EFI system partition is on /dev/sda1; and…
  • your root filesystem is on /dev/sda2 and uses the default subvolume layout as installed by calamares (i.e. the Manjaro installer).

It is of course important that you adapt the instructions below to your actual situation — i.e. you should use the actual block devices for the EFI partition and the btrfs volume on your machine — but with the default configuration in mind, here’s how you would chroot into your btrfs installation… :arrow_down:

mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@ /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@home /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@log /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/log
mount -t btrfs -o subvol=@cache /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/cache
mount -t vfat  /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sysfs /mnt/sys
mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /mnt/sys/firmware/efi/efivars
chroot /mnt /bin/bash

3. Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf… :backhand_index_pointing_down:

nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf`

Scroll down in the file to where you see the compression options. Make sure they are all commented-out — i.e. with a “#” in front of them — and on a new line underneath them, add the line… :backhand_index_pointing_down:

COMPRESSION=cat

Save the file with CtrlO, followed by Enter. Exit the editor with CtrlX.

4. Reinstall your kernel, rebuild your initramfs, and update the grub configuration… :backhand_index_pointing_down:

pacman -S linux618
mkinitcpio -P
install-grub && update-grub

5. Safely reboot your computer from the system menu.

16

I couldn’t get it to work. So I just reinstalled Manjaro and it worked!

Thanks for all the help!

18

That’s not actually true.

  • Windows 11 does not require Secure Boot at all, however, Windows plagues the user with artificial warnings (scare mongering) if it isn’t enabled. One way to avoid that is to disable Secure Boot before installing Windows.
  • TPM 2.0 – Interestingly, the only requirement is that the TPM must exist – there is no actual requirement that it be activated.

The artificial requirements that M$ bakes into their flagship product can be bypassed using a number of approaches. The fact that they can be bypassed clearly demonstrates that there is no technological requirement – it’s just M$ being M$. :facepalm: