Attempted 2 drive dual boot Windows option visible but not working?

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Green_Penguin
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 12:26 pm

Attempted 2 drive dual boot Windows option visible but not working?

#1 Post by Green_Penguin »

Hello again, against my own initial thoughts, I attempted a two drive dual boot setup. Partly because I liked the idea of giving Mx more power, and partly because I wanted to make sure my usb ports on my old laptop weren't causing the talon issue I was experiencing, before talking to that community. MX seems to work flawlessly, with the exception of the inactive but still visible install icon on the desktop Post-install. I see the option to launch the windows boot manager in the list on startup, but this leads to a glowing windows logo which eventually gives up and boots into MX. The drive with windows on it is visible and mountable in mx, and the partition table looks kosher in GParted. Any thoughts on how to straighten this out? I'm not panicked yet, as mx meets almost all of my needs, but I do eventually need to get back in there and boot windows. so far I've tried reinstalling to the windows drive from my rescuezilla backup, disabling the mx m.2 in bios and rebooting, and installing refined, none of that seems to have made a difference.
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j2mcgreg
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Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:04 pm

Re: Attempted 2 drive dual boot Windows option visible but not working?

#2 Post by j2mcgreg »

You need to post the output from the QSI utility. The Quick System Info (QSI) utility is located in MX Tools and its output is automatically formatted for use here in the forum. Run the QSI utility, click “Copy for Forum” at the bottom and then just paste it here in your thread.
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FullScale4Me
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Re: Attempted 2 drive dual boot Windows option visible but not working?

#3 Post by FullScale4Me »

With two drives, you have the potential of starting up from two different drives. When booting from the 1st drive was Windows working after you reinstalled?
Green_Penguin wrote:...I see the option to launch the windows boot manager in the list on startup, but this leads to a glowing windows logo which eventually gives up and boots into MX...
Boot MX Linux (installed or USB) and run Boot Repair. Likely, you'll have to do it twice; once to reinstall Grub on the nvme0n1 SSD that MX Linux is on and a second time to repair the Grub configuration file.

Once this is done, ensure this drive is first in boot order and secondly, MX is first in the EFI boot order. MX Boot Repair *should* have taken care of the latter, but every PC's maker interprets the UEFI specs differently.
Green_Penguin wrote:...with the exception of the inactive but still visible install icon on the desktop Post-install...
Left click once to select it, right click for the menu, and select delete.

For further reading, ‘Dual Boot: MX Linux & Windows-Installation Guide‘, updated December 29, 2024, PDF 1.1 Mb, 27 pages, highly illustrated. I am the primary author, and many others in this & other Linux-related forums contributed.
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m_pav
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Re: Attempted 2 drive dual boot Windows option visible but not working?

#4 Post by m_pav »

Green_Penguin wrote: Mon Apr 28, 2025 9:50 pm with the exception of the inactive but still visible install icon on the desktop Post-install.
So you're using an older Snapshot taken with the option to keep the Desktop from a Live run, not the stock MS ISO?
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