“Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update

Waiting for the MS apologists to say this is a Crowdstrike problem or some other fucking dumbass shit.

Microsoft by and large are just computational cancer at this point. Bloat, crud, fud, and junk.

39

The Crowdstrike problem was in fact a Crowdstrike problem. It affected Linux too, but of course there are vastly fewer users of Crowdstrike on Linux: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/21/crowdstrike_linux_crashes_restoration_tools/

This is pretty obviously a Microsoft problem.

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- Well… yes and no.
  
  The fact that Crowdstrike very obviously and intentionally fuzzed the line between ring 0 drivers and app metadata simply could not have been done without MS’s tacit (at the very least) approval. The initial version where Cloudstrike introduced that side loading threat definition update vector should have been flagged as an issue - more specifically, they should have held them to a FAR more rigorous testing and resiliency standard than they were. This is fairly standard practice (and in many cases enforced as regulatory measures) for highly critical systems and components in a lot of industries, and I’ve worked in two of those industries.
  
  1

I stopped trying to dual boot entirely with all the problems it caused me. I'm surprised the community universally seems to recommend dual booting as an easy to setup option for beginners.

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Easiest way to dual boot is 2 disks, with Linux and grub installed on 2nd disk, and BIOS set to boot to 2nd disk. That way Winblows thinks it is alone in the 1st disk of the system.

Even so had an issue a couple years back that Winblows messed up its own loader, by not placing the boot files in the reserved hidden partition but then configuring the boot as if it did... facepalm Took me a morning of trial and error figuring how Winblows boot to fix it...

Winblows is a cancer, but unfortunately it still is necessary for some gaming.

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- Only for the kind of gaming that is itself a cancer: the one that wants to install a rootkit "anticheat" on your system.
  
  I have a steam deck since the launch of the device and even stuff like old C&C games run on it. Hell, the little guy is able to run even FF16!
  
  Edit: typo
  
  8
- You can do it with a partitioned single disk too. Just use different boot sector partitions for each OS, and don't use a boot manager. Just set Linux as the default boot, and use the BIOS boot options if you want to boot into Windows.
  
  I actually logged into Windows for the first time in 3 years a couple nights ago. I couldn't get Arch to recognize my Kindle, so I needed to verify it was a hardware issue, and not a software issue. Booted into Windows, verified it wasn't recognized, logged out. Fuck those bajillion updates it wants to install. I'm not installing them, especially since it'll just try to trick me into installing Windows 11 again. It can stay 3, 6, or infinity years out of date for all I care. I'm never going to use it for long enough for security to be an issue.
  
  Anyways, I digress. Use separate boot sectors and a single partitioned drive is adequate.
  
  3
Yup

This is shit. But dual booting (on the same drive) has not been viable for decades. It inevitably becomes a mess. Just have windows on one drive and Linux on another if you can't fully switch to Linux.

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- False. I've been using the same drive for years without issues. Just make sure you use separate boot sectors, and handle which OS boots through the BIOS boot manager, not some linked boot manager.
  
  1
Optimally we wouldn't I think but it usually boils down to being the lesser evil.

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Yeah, dual booting on a single drive causes more harm than good. It's very annoying, and I've seen people think it's Linux's fault, saying "I can boot into Windows just fine." It's like saying a bully is the better kid since he never has dirty clothes.

4
Never had an issue with it myself

1
- "works on my machine"
  
  5

Cost me a few hours and ended up just disabling secure boot in the end. Wish I didn't need MS for some programs.

19

Can't you run them in a VM?

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- I did try that years ago, ran into performance issues and other bugs, and it wasn't worth messing around with when dual booting is so simple. Might reconsider in the future if MS keeps messing up though.
  
  9
Just curious, what programs? I'm obsessed with only using FOSS, maybe I can give you some alternatives.

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- For me I have to keep a Windows VM around to run payroll software once a month. There is a Linux version of the software but it depends on some ancient glibc, IIRC. It takes up around 50GB of my NVMe, which I'd move it off of if it didn't already take around 15 minutes for this app to finish loading. All around it is very annoying. The one upside is that while this app is loading it has this ugly always-on-top logo for HMRC but because it's in a VM now I don't have to see it.
  
  1
- It's been a mix throughout the years. The initial problem software years ago was Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, but since then it's been various engineering/programming related software that only supports Windows. I'm primarily on Linux at this point on my laptop.
  
  1

Best solution is to format the C:\ drive and never touch any Microsoft product again. That is what I did 10 years ago.

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The newly freed 40+GB are a nice bonus.

5
- You also got rid of a lot of malware as a bonus. And your PC boots a lot faster now as well.
  
  2

Since moving to Linux this is at least the second time there have been issues with MS screwing up dual boot via grub. I switched to systemd-boot after the first incident, and thank goodness for that.

12

Well that's super obnoxious

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Ugh, I gotta boot into Windows later tonight to get some classwork stuff done and it's gonna want to install crap since I haven't booted it in a couple weeks. I'm running Bazzite (it's Fedora based) on another drive and hopefully I don't have to deal with this, based on what I've seen I think my setup will be fine. (Anyone in Minnesota want to sell me an older MacBook for cheap so I don't have to deal with Windows for six more months?)

EDIT: I just bought a MacBook Pro from Free Geek Portland. Now what's the best way to keep Windows from updating for the next two weeks?

5

Now what's the best way to keep Windows from updating for the next two weeks?

Disable automatic updates with group policy

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- @brb @AlligatorBlizzard that also poses a great security risk since the majority of updated are security-related, even though they also break stuff
  
  2
Turn off automatic updates for Windows. There is no reason to allow it to automatically eat up an hour of your time when you just want to run some local program for 5 minutes and log the fuck out again. Just run security updates before doing any crazy web stuff.

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I've got secure boot disabled so I'm good.

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I have windows in one machine and Linux on the other. And never shall the two interact.

Earlier I did duel boot, then I tried vm using windows in Linux , then VM linux in windows. Then I tried windows 11 with wsl. All of them had issues

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What were the issues you've had with WSL? I've been happily using that for a while now.

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- It did not do background cron tasks over long periods, and, on top of that, the Linux kept crashing after a few hours. Particularly if the machine went to sleep
  
  I had issues installing some things : after I learned to use docker desktop that was not so much an issue though. But, the docker desktop at that time kept crashing due to memory issues .
  
  Additionally I had issues with Kubernetes, particularly the gateway, in windows ,that just worked in Linux
  
  Also I had trouble managing tens of thousands of files in my code editor, phpstorm. I wanted the files on the Linux side but had issues despite running the editor on the windows side or Linux side. I had trouble using Linux tools when managed from my editor.
  
  Also, when I tried it , I had some issues integrating Linux and windows gui together.
  
  I think I would have had more success with all of these if I had more experience with the things that bothered me; and honestly phpstorm has always been a pain.
  
  But I drifted more into Linux land and more or less gave up on windows except for games and connecting to other window machines .
  
  But I was really impressed by the integration of wls, and spent many happy hours
  
  2

"Diversity is our strength!" Since women, black and mentally devastated individuals has taken key roles, Western society is a circus xD

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