Manjaro is on Drive 1, can I reinstall Windows onto drive 2 without it taking over the bootloade? Or can I just boot Manjaro after that by picking the Linux drive at bootup by pressing the motherboard’s boot key?
Assuming “Drive 1” and “Drive 2” are actual disks and not partitions:
1. Physically disconnect the Manjaro Drive 1 disk.
2. Install Windows 11 however you wish on the Drive 2 disk.
3. When finished, reconnect the Manjaro Drive 1 disk.
4. Boot immediately to BIOS and make sure Manjaro Disk 1 is first in boot order.
5. Reboot – os-prober should automatically detect the new Microsoft EFI boot files on Disk 2 – which means that Windows will then show in the Grub2 menu.
By disconnecting the other drive before installing another OS such as Windows, the Manjaro disk is obviously isolated from the Windows Setup process (Safe).
I hope this helps. Cheers.
A tutorial I previously wrote extends on this greatly. Several important caveats are mentioned that should also be addressed when multibooting Manjaro and Windows.
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Thought so, hoped to hear something else, back in the days of SuSE 8.1, I had a dual boot. Then it was the same drive, anyway I went to YaST to the boot config, saved the loader to floppy & when Windows did this I put the floppy in to boot SuSE go back into YasT & saved the boot loader back to the HDD. I wish Manjaro had YaST, that was a great control center. Not sure how old I was.
It was. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the need for elevated privileges just to open the control centre itself; but I got used to it eventually.
agree, that’s the best
but last time I’ve installed Manjaro first with 500 mb EFI partition and after Win11 on the second SSD and Win was seeing the Manjaro EFI as Disk D:, don’t know why…
then I resinstalled Win first and Manjaro second and Win deed not see the disk D:
Windows only sees Microsoft compatible filesystems by default; an $ESP partition is typically formatted with FAT32. Normally a properly flagged $ESP is effectively hidden from Windows, so, I don’t know why, either.
Does KDE system settings have a module to config the boot loader like YaST?
You are overlooking something… Nowadays, x86(-64) computers use UEFI firmware, while back in the days of SuSE 8.1, the firmware was still the legacy real-mode BIOS from the days of MS-DOS.
UEFI boots in a different way, by way of an EFI system partition and EFI variables stored in the computer’s non-volatile memory. So this leaves more room for Microsoft Windows to be able to mess with your boot process.
You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. 
Not to the best of my knowledge.
I quickly found this:
However, it might not work with Manjaro’s GRUB, as it’s quite heavily customized.
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I just want a way to save Grub to a USB then back to the SSD if Windows messes it up.
There’s no if 'bout it. And that’s what this is for:
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Nothing will be messed with if you disconnect the Manjaro disk before installing Windows, and reconnect it again when finished, as I already mentioned.
All you typically need is a philips head screwdriver to open the case, and to know which disk each OS is installed on, before you unplug the SATA cable.
Of course the machine should be powered down when you do the unplugging/plugging.
It doesn’t get much easier.
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What do I need tO be able to play even windows games on Steam for Manjaro? Is it download & play or do I have to setup stuff like play on linux?
A big topic.
I’d suggest a new thread is better for this question, as I already predict it will take a wild and stormy path until you finally have the answers you’ll need.
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It is download and play for emulation, renpy, OpenGL games. For directX games (until recently windows exclusive) can be downloaded and each game is a case by case. Check the proton compatibility website