I recently installed Windows on a separate drive and took extra precautions to make sure it didn't interfere with my Linux installation. I even removed my Linux drive during the installation to prevent Windows from messing with its EFI partition. However, after booting up, I found that while Windows loads fine, Linux is missing from the boot menu in BIOS. I can still see all my Linux partitions from within Windows. Could Windows have made changes in the BIOS that caused this?
1 Answer
It’s likely not Windows that caused the issue. Since you physically removed your Linux drive, the motherboard couldn’t find the Linux boot entry, so it removed it from the menu because it was pointing to a drive that isn’t there anymore. You’ll need to recreate the Linux boot entry. What distro and bootloader are you using?
I doubt it's just a coincidence though. My boot menu got really messy after Windows was installed.
I'm using rEFInd as my boot manager along with Arch Linux.