I disconnected my SSDs to perform a clean installation of Windows, but now the drive with Linux isn't recognized as bootable, even though it appears in the BIOS. I enabled secure boot during the Windows installation process—could that be affecting things? I don't want to do a full reinstall since I have important files on the Linux drive. Is there any way to access them? Any help would be appreciated!
3 Answers
It's possible that your UEFI settings are hiding unsigned boot entries with secure boot enabled. Try disabling secure boot temporarily to see if that helps. If it does, you can usually configure your Linux installation to support secure boot later, but that depends on the distro you’re using.
Have you tried booting from a Linux live USB? That way, you can access your files without affecting your current installation. It's a good workaround to recover those important files.
Make sure to check your EFI partition. Sometimes, if the Windows installation shared the same EFI partition, it could have erased the Linux files there. This is a common issue when reinstalling Windows.
Yeah, and if that’s the case, you might need to redo your Linux setup or at least restore the files from a backup. Just be cautious!