I set up a Windows 11 and CachyOS dual-boot system. Windows uses one drive for the operating system and another for programs and games, and I installed CachyOS on what I thought was a third drive. The installation worked, and the Limine boot menu appeared normally after several restarts. Now the computer boots straight into Windows without showing Limine. Windows Disk Management still shows the Linux space, but it has no drive letter or label and is simply marked as a healthy partition. Secure Boot and Fast Startup are disabled, and the Windows boot manager only lists Windows 11. Is the CachyOS installation still intact, and how can I restore access to it?
3 Answers
A simpler long-term setup is to keep each operating system's bootloader on its own physical drive and use the BIOS boot menu or boot-order settings to choose between them. If CachyOS and Windows are on separate physical drives, select the Linux drive first when you want Limine, or choose the Windows drive directly when you do not. Partitions on one disk are not separate drives, even though Windows assigns them different letters.
The Linux installation is probably still there. Windows Disk Management usually cannot identify Linux filesystems, so seeing an unlabeled healthy partition is normal. Boot from a CachyOS installation USB, open a terminal, mount your installed system, chroot into it, and reinstall or repair the Limine bootloader. You can do this from the live USB even though the installed system no longer boots.
It sounds like you may have created another partition rather than another physical drive. Windows calling it a healthy partition does not mean it erased Linux, but a Windows update or boot-order change may have replaced or stopped detecting the Limine entry in the EFI firmware. Check the firmware's boot entries first, then use the CachyOS live environment to repair the bootloader if the entry is gone.
I was confused because I thought chroot required access to the installed Linux system. I didn't realize it could be done from the live USB, so that clears things up.