Windows 10 is really, really getting on my nerves of late. I booted up this morning so I could use Skype and ended up missing the call because the system was sooooo sssssssllllllloooooooowwwww. Well, after 20 minutes, I just hard shutdown and went to work on doing updates.

But, of course, it cannot be that easy. Again! Windows decides it is the only OS on the system and sets the system to boot to only itself. Mind you, all this is going on while I’m sick and wanting to be just in bed staring up at the ceiling in between coughs and sniffles. So, I could vaguely remember the fix was easy, but I could not remember what it was.

Then, I found “Fix Grub Not Showing For Windows 10 Linux Dual Boot” tucked away in my Instapaper links. It was almost exactly what I needed! However, different systems put their UEFI files in different places (so much for “universal”, huh?), and I wasn’t sure where to put mine when I setup the system, so I know I put it in an odd place, naively thinking I would never need to look again. So, I poked around and found it. The command is:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\mygrub\grubx64.efi

So, I put this on the Windows Desktop for next time, since this seems to be an ongoing thing.
 

Using GRUB is a little harder than using syslinux, but it is required if you want UEFI support. Here’s how to use GRUB2 for UEFI and LUKS encrypted volumes for the .Arch Linux side and still dual boot into Windows 10

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned that this article is built upon previous work I did using LVM on LUKS on an MBR system. There are scripts with comments that can be used to be a recipe for that at https://github.com/JDCNS/ArchVMInstall.]

This article is partly the result of Microsoft’s constant giving of five confusing names for the same thing and just plain backwards way of doing things. It is also partly because overall GRUB is such a flexible and customizable tool that finding all of the information in one spot is unlikely.
Continue reading “How-To GRUB2 for UEFI and LUKS Encrypted Volumes for Arch Linux and Windows 10”

How to create USB Multiboot thumb drive with MBR

The typical USB boot drive uses the legacy MBR to boot, which is fine for most utility and Windows installation images up to Windows 7. There are several free applications that can be used to create USB multiboot thumb drive with various strengths and weaknesses, but the most versatile without sacrificing ease of use might be Easy2Boot. If all that is needed is MBR booting from ISO images, then it often is as simple as adding the appropriate ISO image to the correct directory. In addition, using Easy2Boot makes it easier to transition into more sophisticated boots, including UEFI. Continue reading “Create USB Multiboot Thumb Drive w/ MBR”

Easy2Boot_logoI’ve used MultibootUSB for a year or more now, and it is a handy way to create a bootable USB stick that can boot into a number of Linux or Linux-like (e.g., Ultimate Boot CD) distros. However, it does not do Windows install boots, and it requires ripping apart the ISO file to do its job. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could more or less just put the ISO on the stick and know it will boot? Well, you can almost do that now with Easy2Boot. Continue reading “Review: Easy2Boot Multiplatform USB Boot Creator”