Any and all help would be so greatly appreciated. I’ve been battling with my laptop to be able to dual-boot Ubuntu Cinnamon and Windows 10 for about four days now. I’ve probably gone down five or six different rabbit-holes of troubleshooting, GRUB command-line fun, reinstalling and updating the BIOS, trying and failing to deal with VMX and locked NVram. As of now, my system boot-loops and fails to run Windows, but paradoxically I am able to get Ubuntu running, which is what I am using now.

I’ll try to provide as much relevant information here as I can:

  • Device: HP ZBook 17, gen 6
  • Primary OS: Windows 10 Home
  • Linux distro: Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10
  • Ubuntu location: /dev/sda3
  • grub-install --version = 2.12~rc1-10ubuntu4
  • boot-repair Boot-info summary: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/rxZ3D5GtpP/
  • I’m more than happy to provide more information as it’s requested.

As of now, I am unable to run Windows through the BIOS. If I run via the dedicated SSD as I normally do, it boot-loops, and if I try to go through any other drives it just tells me I need to install an OS. I am currently able to run Ubuntu, but only by going through the following process:

  1. Startup menu
  2. Boot configuration
  3. Boot from EFI > Ubuntu > shimx64.efi

At this point, I am happy with two outcomes to this scenario:

  1. I am able to run my laptop with Windows 10 as the primary OS, with the ability to dual-boot to Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10.
  2. Assuming option 1 is impossible/requires a Herculean amount of work to pull off from this state, I am willing to scrub Windows 10 from my laptop and move forward with Cinnamon as my daily driver, though I am rather inexperienced in it. I can learn to move forward as I need to and run a VM or WINE for any Windows-specific processes I still need to do. But I would rather keep this option as my dead man’s switch.
  • @ClassyOP
    3•6 months ago

    Thanks for the no-nonsense reply. I have been smelling a little bit of bullshit with the whole dual boot fiasco here for a bit. VMX not behaving, Windows’ VM utility not behaving, BIOS not behaving, it’s like goddamn if I type a command I wouldn’t mind if it stuck instead of seemingly getting thrown into a black hole.

    Going with your approach, I imagine if I pick a home distro and decide I want to move to another down the line the transition is far easier than this? Even if I am switching from say Ubuntu to Fedora?

    • @[email protected]
      2•6 months ago

      I’ve been happily dualbooting Win10/Mint for years on the very machine I’m writing from. Zero issues with boots, GRUB, no need for flatpaks, both systems work fine, both configs heavily customized.

      • @ClassyOP
        1•6 months ago

        I’ll have to spend some time backing up and moving some files around but I think this is how I’ll move forward. I think I’ll also find a cracked Win10 image and I’ll keep it on a thumb drive if ever i need to full on run the OS. I use a few proprietary software that universally get the JUST USE FOSS ALTERNATIVES argument from people not in the know.