Microsoft’s latest security update has ruined dual-boot Windows and Linux PCs
www.theverge.com
The update wasn’t supposed to reach dual-boot PCs.

My GF recently said I can install Linux on her laptop. Then I saw Windows broke dual boot systems.

Is it safe to do a dual boot if she already has the update that broke dual booting?

Should I just figure out how to install Windows in a VM for her?

Appreciate any insight y’all can offer

  • @just_another_person
    -4•20 days ago

    Dumb title. Yes, it’s safe. Windows has nerfed boot records for any other OS since the beginning of dual-booting. Just replace the boot record.

    Also, if you want to be hardcore about it, and since everything is UEFI now, just use your BIOS boot manager to control booting. Shouldn’t be a problem.

    • Skull giver
      7•20 days ago

      The problem linked also breaks booting from the UEFI menu, because the motherboard boot configuration got updated to not trust known vulnerable versions of Grub.

      That said, Windows stopped clobbering boot records since UEFI was introduced. It’ll change the boot order sometimes (like when it auto recovers from boot corruption) but you can always boot Linux if it does that. Unfortunately, Linux doesn’t generally come with a good boot order manager, so fixing that requires either diving into the BIOS or command line stuff.

      • @just_another_person
        1•20 days ago

        I looked at the breakdown, and I believe it’s only changing the preference for same device.

        • Max-P
          3•20 days ago

          It doesn’t change the preferences but it does replace bootx64.efi which is the default bootloader executable for a drive, when the UEFI doesn’t have more specific entries. In some configurations both Windows and GRUB want to be that.

          If you add a boot entry for GRUB and don’t point it to the default executable, then it won’t be affected. Until you reset the BIOS or try to use the drive in another system that is, in which case the firmware will then only know about the default executable. But it’s easy to add the boot entries back.

          • @just_another_person
            1•20 days ago

            Yes, on the same device. If your BIOS specifically orders a different device as boot, this wouldn’t matter, as in my original post.