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.
  • dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.world
    3·
    11 months ago

    It sounds like you have Windows in one disk and Ubuntu in another disk. Confirm this before proceeding.

    Now if that’s true, and what you said about dedicated windows ssd on a boot loop, it sounds like MRB needs fixing. I suggest you make yourself a windows 10 USB disk or disc. Run that and when it asks to install, you look for recovery. And try to run the fix boot and recover MRB.

    Something like these 2 commands

    Bootrec /fixboot

    Bootrec /fixmrb

    commands

    • ClassyOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      You are correct. Thank you for giving some options for processing on this path. I’m still deciding whether I want to continue trying the dual boot route, figuring out how to get VMX running, or just maining Linux and dealing with the learning curve. I do feel that my end plan, however long that would be, is to be using Linux as my primary OS anyway and there’s no time like the present, but for all I know after sleeping on it I may decide that I still want a functional Windows in my laptop.