Grub; UEFI; Windows. Let's be Friends again.

Or should I call it "How not to #fear #windows #updates"? 🤔

WARNING!!! This is nerdy #linux stuff. If you're not interested, click here

On #Manjaro Linux i had some strange problems with my boot process. Right after installation everything was fine. But there where 2 situations I tried to avoid

(Chipset/Mainboard) Firmware Updates
Windows 10 Service Pac...uhm Creator updates

So why? Because after both events, I wasnt able to boot Manjaro anymore because the bootloader was not there found and the system just bootet straight to Windows. I still have no Idea why - and it was not just with this mainboard, but with all UEFI installations.

So just in January I've found a solution: We create an own efi-boot entry

Step 1

Install and update Grub

Of course we wanna use grub. So let's install it. You need to know where your EFI partition is mounted to. In most cases this is /boot/efi So we use this and run

sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro 
sudo update-grub

Now grub is there and up-2-date

Step 2

Add the Manjaro efi-boot-entry

This part is where grub seems to suck. So we do it without grub. Again, you need to know on wich partition is your EFI. In most cases thats the first partition on the first harddisk. So --disk /dev/sda --part 1

sudo efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --loader /EFI/Manjaro/grubx64.efi --label "Manjaro" --verbose

And done with that part.

Step 3

Clean up your EFI-boot

Now run efibootmgr
You'll get a List of your boot entries. There are 2 important ones "Manjaro" and "Windows Boot Manager". Ignore them. We want to keep them as they are. But there should be more than this. Like a "Linux Boot Manager" and maybe other stuff. Thats what we dont want anymore.

For me this line looks like this:

BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002
Boot0001* Manjaro
Boot0002* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0003* Linux Bootloader
Boot0004* reFind
Boot0005* Ubuntu

Now the last 3 are not needed anymore and also not working. So I delete them.

sudo efibootmgr -B -b 03
sudo efibootmgr -B -b 04 
sudo efibootmgr -B -b 05

Done!

Step 4

Optional - setup the default OS

Now reboot and load your UEFI-Setup (BIOS). Look for a "Boot Order" List and change this as you want. You can put Manjaro on the first place if you want to.

And thats it!

Now Windows updates and Firmware updates should not screw up your system all the time. For me it works and it also survived the april creators update. 👍

Grub; UEFI; Windows. Let's be Friends again. | Ecency