I recently installed Arch Linux on my laptop and had to switch the SATA configuration from Intel to AHCI. Now, Arch is up and running, but I can't find Windows in the boot menu. I'm currently on a tight budget and can't afford to make mistakes that might cost me my Windows installation. What can I do to get Windows back? I've got Arch set up pretty nicely now and plan on using it as my main OS, but I want to recover my Windows too.
4 Answers
First things first, check your BIOS settings to see if the Windows Boot Manager is listed in the boot order. If it's not there, you might have lost Windows entirely. If that's the case, you could reinstall Windows, but that would mean losing any data you had on it.
You might need to use an AHCI-compatible version of Windows. If Windows is still on your disk, you may need to switch between AHCI and RAID/VMD in the BIOS to access it. Moving forward, it's usually easier if you install Windows first with AHCI enabled, then set up Arch. If you're new to all this, I suggest checking out another user-friendly distro like CachyOS or Fedora.
Looks like you had quite the adventure! You might want to grab a Windows USB installer from a friend or visit your local library to create one. At least you can say, "I used Arch" because of this experience! 😂
Could you give the output of `lsblk` to see how many disks are listed? Installing a graphical tool like GParted will help you check if any NTFS partitions (Windows) exist on your disk. If you installed Arch without touching Windows partitions, reverting back to RAID mode in the BIOS might allow Windows to boot again.
Haha, yeah, the struggle's real! Thanks for the advice!