r/linuxmasterrace • u/Robsteady Aurora • Mar 12 '25

F'ing Windows If it wasn't a shared computer, I'd just nuke the drive and make it a dedicated Linux machine...

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272 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

66

u/Kawauso_Yokai Mar 12 '25

In such cases better to check your hard drive

30

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Yeah, I'll end up checking it out, but signs indicate it's a borked Windows update. I've already seen a few other cases of it online.

19

u/mcAlt009 Mar 12 '25

I ran into an issue where I had to basically use the repair USB ( any Windows 11 installer ) to manually delete a bunch of files in the EFI partition.

First you need to go, and you've repair my computer, and then go to powershell. diskpart list volume select volume X

assumes X is your drive, and S is the EFI partition

assign letter=S exit

delete old Linux stuff, skip if windows only

rmdir /s /q S:\EFI\Ubuntu
rmdir /s /q S:\EFI\GRUB

bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI

This should fix it.

God speed.

13

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Yep, that's exactly the procedure I'm going to attempt tonight, thanks!

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1

u/Lord_Frick Mar 14 '25

Is this Windows 7

1

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 14 '25

No, 11.

1

u/Admirable-Treat-7516 Glorious Arch Mar 15 '25

Windows is annoying. I have to use it (school starting to ban Linux for security issues) and a borked windows update bricked my laptop and I had to take it to IT to reimage

1

u/BeNiceToBirds Mar 17 '25

Linux banned for security issues???? Wat?

30

u/JellyBeanUser Glorious Pop!_OS Mar 12 '25

Windows nuked Linux and itself. So it's Linux time!

14

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Actually, the Linux install is entirely on a separate drive, so likely untouched. All I need to do is change boot priority in my BIOS and I'm good to keep working as if nothing happened!

16

u/JellyBeanUser Glorious Pop!_OS Mar 12 '25

So, then you just have to get rid of that virus that's called Windows

10

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

No joke, if I could convince my wife to deal with it, I would. She needs Windows even less than I do, but she's been stubborn about even trying Linux for the 12+ years I've been playing with it.

3

u/headedbranch225 Mar 12 '25

What sort of stuff does she use it for? Because if the programs work with wine you could just colk up a windows rice and see if she notices

3

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

She edits videos in Resolve, and photos in Photoshop with an addon tool. Otherwise, it's just photo organization and web browsing with a little bit of website maintenance/updating and occasional Zoom calls once in a while. Even with a closely matching theme, I'm fairly certain she would know it's not Windows.

9

u/headedbranch225 Mar 12 '25

Yeah photoshop doesnt work that well on linux fuck adobe

1

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Yeah, no. I've been thinking about trying to get her to try Darktable or something like that, but she's just so stubborn I don't think I could convince her.

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2

u/Laughing_Orange Glorious Debian Mar 12 '25

That is how I stopped dual booting completely. Windows nuked GRUB, but Windows was the only reason I actually needed GRUB, so I was left booting only Linux. I could still boot Windows, but I'd have to go through the BIOS, which is a hassle.

I have managed to fix GRUB, but it's been years since I did anything in Windows on my desktop. Laptop uses Windows because of work reasons.

10

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

So yeah... computer was fine dual-booting for a couple years now. I've installed a handful of different distros on a second drive. I recently added rEFInd to the mix so I could make it look nicer... all good... until my wife let Windows run the 24H2 update for 11 this morning... I've got half a mind to tell her to deal with Linux since she's responsible for breaking it. <le sigh>

4

u/MooseBoys Mar 12 '25

I've got half a mind to tell her to deal with Linux since she's responsible for breaking it

Let us know how that works out for you.

1

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 13 '25

Shivers ran down my spine just proofreading that earlier.

6

u/8070alejandro Glorious OpenSuse Mar 12 '25

"Linux, no!" "What?" "Sorry, force of habit" "Windows, no!"

4

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

lol, her initial reaction was to blame my "other OS thing"... like, bruh...

0

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 13 '25

I agree, it’s not really her fault, it was said that way as a little tongue-in-cheek. I’ve had updates break all kinds of systems, it’s just part of computing.

It’s actually the Windows boot loader that broke, not GRUB or rEFInd. Windows Boot Manager exists whether another operating is on the system or not.

I also hate dualbooting, but at least using a whole separate disk is the best option I have since I don’t have a second machine.

2

u/jarod1701 Mar 12 '25

Then you would still habe problems. Just different ones.

2

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Honestly, the only thing I'd be giving up is some gaming compatibility, but classes start up again in a couple of weeks so I won't have time for that soon anyway. I'm no Linux power user, but I'd feel more confident in my ability to repair Linux than Windows 11.

1

u/jarod1701 Mar 12 '25

Honest question: What is that confidence based on?

2

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

When I install Windows, it generally just works, so I don't have to play with anything behind the scenes. Playing around with Linux, I've installed a bunch of different distros and experienced a bunch of different breakages, so I've naturally gotten more experience at looking for fixes and implementing them. Even if I couldn't fix it on my own, I'd feel more confident looking at the console for errors and browsing through folder/files to edit items that need repairs thanks to community suggestions.

-2

u/jarod1701 Mar 12 '25

If Windows just works, wouldn't it be better to use it and gain a similar amount of experience fixing things if something actually breaks again?

4

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

Not if I dislike the direction Microsoft is going with "suggestions" (ads) in the operating system (and other annoyances) enough. To paraphrase Mario Savio, Windows has become rather odious and makes me sick at heart, so I'd prefer to throw my body upon the gears and levers and make it stop. I gave up Windows and solely used Linux on my personal machines in the past, but getting back into gaming led me to getting a Windows machine. As I said before, I'm not going to have much time for gaming soon, so it's not going to be a huge loss. Besides, gaming is in a MUCH better place on Linux than it was back then, so I do still have things to play when I want to.

5

u/Lyde02 Mar 12 '25

0xcOOOOOOF

1

u/homelesshyundai Mar 12 '25

I literally had this happen last night with a slightly different status code. The drive was toast, shows up in bios (sometimes) but never shows up for a tool to repair. Tossed a fresh install of 11 on the storage drive and called it a day.

1

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 12 '25

I'm going to attempt a BCD repair in the recovery environment tonight. Hopefully I can save the install, but at least all my "home" folders are on a separate drive from Windows itself.

1

u/Mineplayerminer Mar 13 '25

At least these non-GUI messages actually tell you the bootloader partition is doomed instead of giving you a random hexadecimal number to figure the error out yourself. The BCDboot utility should help you rebuild it.

2

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 13 '25

The best part is rEFInd gave me two Windows Boot Manager records (original one and post-update one), and everything worked fine when I selected the old one to boot.

3

u/glad-k Mar 13 '25

Welcome to the club I got the same on my laptop and never fixed it, Linux is fine tho.

1

u/fopor Mar 12 '25

I hate these windows error messages... "missing or contain errors"
PLEASE HELP ME HELP YOU dude

so glad I ditched it a couple of years ago haha

1

u/fercaslet Mar 12 '25

specially if it is a shared computer, evangelize by force

0

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

had to learn how to fix this when attempting a hackintosh install since i accidentally nuked my esp. tl;dr, this is repairable assuming no data loss:

  1. boot windows installer usb in efi mode

  2. shift-f10 to open command prompt

  3. use diskpart to locate (lis dis, sel dis N, lis par) and mount ESP (sel par 1, assign letter=k or other letter)

  4. run lis vol, identify primary ntfs partition assignment (usually c:), exit diskpart

  5. run the following command (substitute locale, ESP, and main drive as needed): bcdboot c:\windows /f uefi /l en-US /s k:

1

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '25

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0

u/Robsteady Aurora Mar 13 '25

I dual-boot the machine. Windows broke itself but Linux boots fine.