Windows eats partitions

I really hate that Windows does this. Which is why when I decide to switch a machine to Linux it's the only OS allowed to boot to bare metal. Windows can go in a VM and suck it.

Not sure why, but your comment made me think about the first machine I switched to Linux. It was a laptop who's fan eventually had a bad bearing and needed to be replaced. Luckily it was still under warranty, so I sent the laptop in to get the fan replaced, and received my laptop back with Windows installed on it... I was so livid.
- Never send them the drive.
  They are probably required to boot to the desktop for qa
- Had something similar happen to me. Something unrelated to the OS or hard drive and they reformatted my drive and I lost everything. I was ballistic when I found that one out.
- That pissed me off
That's the way to go
I want to do this so bad but gaming always stops me. Some anticheat refuses to let you play in a vm
- Just install windows on a physically separate disk. It doesn't eat other disks, but might take a bite of other partitions on the same disk (if NTFS is corrupted or misaligned).
Defective by design. I really hate windows but need it for Ableton.
Can I boat off Linux USB and run an MBR recovery program or something?
Depending on your configuration, you can pass a gpu to your Windows VM so you don’t even lose any performance if you use Windows for gaming. All you need is an iGPU and a few extra cores/ram to handle the host overhead.
Get a separate disk for windows and you can set up your windows VM to also optionally dual boot into it

What's actually happening here is Windows is setting its bootloader first in your EFI when it gets updated. Linux isn't gone, you just have to press the "boot another drive" button and boot to it, or go into your EFI setup and switch the bootloader back to the Linux one.

Linuxes do the same thing when updating their bootloader.

Note for the Ackshually crowd: If you're still booting MBR (which comes with the partition eating risk on dual boots) you have a system that is older than Windows 8 - 11+ years old, so eating the MBR is something you'll have to deal with unconventionally, as all modern systems, OS, and hardware expect you to be using EFI.

Not the case. What's happening here is Windows is removing the ext4 partition completely, expanding the ntfs partition and writing to all of it.
Windows update did that to my <1 year old laptop. I figured it had just wiped out grub, but when it was booted from a live-usb there was no ext4 partition there at all. This has been reported many times.
Microsoft should be sued for this shit. Legal protection from destroying people's data that is not part of Windows or in a Windows partition, whether deliberately or by negligence, is not something that can be legitimately covered by a license agreement.
- Second that. I can't think of a way that that is not deliberate. The "cover" would be that it is ensuring that the full device is used so that the end user doesn't have to worry about it. In reality, there's no legitimate reason for an update to touch the partition table. Way to easy to brick the system.
Grub does not do the same thing unless something has gone wrong. It detects windows and offers you the choice on boot as to which OS to start.
- Grub is still the first bootloader in that case. You would not notice if it was putting itself first after an update unless you have Windows booting first.
  You might notice if you are booting between multiple linuxes, all with their own version of grub.
In my experience (W11 + Fedora on UEFI Thinkpad), I've seen it actually get rid of the Fedora entry from the UEFI boot list. Reinstalling GRUB from chroot didn't fix it, so I used EasyUEFI and manually added the Fedora EFI file to the boot list and that worked.
So it wasn't simply changing the boot order, it actually nuked Fedora from the UEFI boot list.
- There are multiple ways it can Ops mess up Linux boot loaders, this is one of several
  I have no patience for this shit, the last 5 years, if a game doesn't work in Linux, I don't need to play it
It sometimes destroys the Linux boot sector too. But it's simple enough to chroot with a live usb and repair it. I don't even have both OS as an option. Mine boots straight into Linux unless I interrupt it and use the boot another drive option. Linux and Windows have their own separate boot sectors, but Windows will fubar the Linux sector randomly.
But this is Lemmy Linux memes where they tell lies or use half truths about other OS's and laugh about it rather than making actual clever memes! Get outta here with that sense!!
- And where they ridicule Windows users because they're "not good enough at computers to use Linux" yet they keep pointing out all the ways they themselves aren't able to use Windows 🤔

It’s not a feature, but it’s by design.
When my dad died he left behind a handful of laptops and computers around the house, all running Linux.
My mother has to call me for help with setting up her TV, she wasn't about to learn Linux. I managed to get any critical files off and we installed Windows. For all of it's faults, it's certainly a hell of a lot easier to use.
When I had a computer dual booting Windows and Linux, I maybe booted up Linux three or four times over the years I had it. It honestly just created a headache when that machine crapped out because half the files I wanted were damn near impossible to recover. Those on the Linux side. Now you could say if I had installed Linux and tried to recover them it would have been no problem and you would have been right, but running Linux is a headache in and of itself. I can acknowledge that it's a better operating system, but not from a usability or access to software standpoint. Even if both of those areas are improving, windows still wins in both.
- I am not doubting your experience and respect your judgement. However, I'm having trouble trying to understand how Windows files were easier to get than Linux. To me, it seems like they would be equally as easy, except that using a Linux live boot USB is much easier to make, which you can use for both. Perhaps, the Linux drive was encrypted? Anyone have ideas how Linux files would be more difficult to access? I'm really just trying to understand.
- "I don't want to learn something new, therefore Windows is better."
  Wouldn't that have been easier to type than all that filler?
- Counterpoint. I used to get constant tech support calls from both of my parents until i switched them both to Linux. Now if i get a call from either of them more than twice a year it's an oddity, and that is usually to install new hardware like a printer which they couldn't install on windows either.
- That’s fair though I’m on my second attempt to switch. The first was several years ago and I did the dual boot and never actually use linux thing. This time I only boot up windows for things I wouldn’t have a problem with if I was running a Debian instead of arch based distro
  Windows is still easier but it’s not just that linux is catching up. Windows is getting worse and harder to use. I still use it at work and every update I dislike it more.

Dual booting < having two separate SSD's

They still need to share an EFI partition
- Not really if you have a bootloader like refind it will look for other EFIs and list them. Makes for a really clean set up
- If you don't want to bother with the bootloader like the other comment mentioned you can also just use the boot menu from the motherboard instead. You gotta mash f11 (or whatever it is on your motherboard) on boot when you want to go into Windows, but if you only need it every once in a while it is good enough.

Never happened to me. Like ever. And I've been on Linux (with occasional dual-booting whenever I'm in a position where I need windows--) for like 15 years now?

To be honest a lot of stuff people talk about seems to not happen to me and I think I might be exceedingly lucky or smth.

My guess: the windows update fucked up Grub. Happened to me once or twice in 20 years of dual booting. It is also easily recoverable.
- I do remember like, back in the day, having a LiveDVD around that had all sorts of 'recovery tools', among them one that was a one-click "grub is breaked, pls fix" thing.
  Only had to use it once or twice though.
It tends to happen if you are not using the windows bootloader (GRUB for example) but if you use the windows bootloader it should be fine
- Oh it just changes the bootloader? That's not a big deal. Easy to fix from any live usb.
  Also, for any distro hoppers out there... Do yourself a favour and put Ventoy on a USB. You can thank me later
- With EFI systems this doesn't matter. It was an issue with the legacy BIOS bootloader systems about a decade ago though.
Same. Never happened to me either. But I usually make a sperate UEFI partition for Linux instead of relying on grub.
- That is true for me now, but for years I used dual boot on old BIOS based systems so idk /shrug
To be honest a lot of stuff people talk about seems to not happen to me and I think I might be exceedingly lucky or smth.
Considering the people who seem to have issues are the ones who go out of their way to be all "Linux good/Microsoft bad" I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume most of it is total bullshit.
I've built half a dozen PC's running windows 10 from scratch and not a single one of them has gotten messed up during the incredibly straightforward install/update process. It's so dumb simple compared to virtually anything else I just don't get how you could even have problems.
Listening to Windows problems on here from Linux users (I use both btw just to avoid the inevitable pedantry) is like watching a toddler throw a fit because he found out you have to peel a banana before you eat it, but their favorite fruit is an orange.
- is like watching a toddler throw a fit because he found out you have to peel a banana before you eat it, but their favorite fruit is an orange.
  Got to admit, that's one hell of a response. Can be used in many situations.
- See your argument might hold water if "stuff people talk about" were something applicable only to Windows/Linux fights. (Windows can lick my fuzzy horse ass, btw---)
  But like. People love to meme on how SystemD makes your computer hang up for a long while when shutting down? Never saw it happen. People meme on PulseAudio breaking? Never happened to me. Shit like that.
- Considering the people who seem to have issues are the ones who go out of their way to be all “Linux good/Microsoft bad” I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume most of it is total bullshit.
  Considering a simple google search of these terms brings up multiple people whose position on Linux and Microsoft is completely unknown to anyone else but themselves, having the exact problem OP is posting about, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume you've attached your identity to Microsoft and have to defend them for some reason.
  I've been using Computers for nearly 30 years, and Windows has come a LONG way in that time. But lets not pretend windows doesn't shit the bed sometimes. Hell a simple google search will reveal articles like this one and a large number of results of peoples PC's having issues after windows update. Youtubers have made videos on windows update issues.
  I had one of my PC's straight up boot loop after a routine windows update and had to use a recovery to fix it, only for windows to auto update and re boot loop itself immediately afterwards. Most of the time, windows updates are fine, but sometimes they fuck shit up.
Neither happened to me. It only happens if you install windows, not when you're upgrading it...

Windows only updates the bootloader, it doesn't touch Linux partitions. After an update you just have to fix the bootloader again which isn't too hard if you know how it works.

- I'm sure it varies a lot, but you should be able to enter bios setup and add a boot option. There may be a file browser type popup and you can add the known file as a boot option. Right now it may be looking for the old file location on the current windows boot option you have.
I'd argue one shouldn't even be messing with dual booting if they don't understand much about the bootloader.
- My counterpoint would be how does one best learn about anything if not by messing with it

In my case it wasn't the boot entry being removed. It actually ate the partition. When installing Linux Mint, I resized the Windows partition in Linux. Then I noticed that Windows absolutely didn't recognize that change, and thought its partition is still as big as it used to. Then on a restart it hit me with the "Repairing drive C:" which killed the Linux partition leaving just something corrupted.
"Repairing"

Windows: "Let me repair Linux for you"
- Ew, you've got a linux on your windshield, lemme just hit the wipers for you real quick
Have you tried first resizing the windows partition inside windows? That's what I did and my dual boot has stayed intact
- Yep, that's what I did later and it worked.

If you still "dual boot", be advised that Windows is a piece of shit and will almost always cause this with a "build" update. Highly, highly recommend having Linux and Windows (shame on you) on separate physical drives.

Not so easy to do when your laptop only has space for one
- Don't most laptops also have at least 1 M.2 slot in addition to SATA bay? I know it's supposed to be for Wifi but you can use a USB wifi dongle (you could even wire it up internally if you wanted to) while still having an NGFF SSD for Linux and having Windows on the SATA bay (or vice versa, whichever you prefer).
Funny, cause most I hear do not have this problem.
Sounds like a skill issue.
Its so much easier too, i didnt even have to configure grub or anything it automatically detected the windows drive.

Protip:

Just don't have a live Windows partition.

This. I entirely understand that some people don't have that option, but it's worth reiterating that if you have a choice, you're best off not to have partitions at all.
I run Mint on an 8-year-old Mac desktop machine with no partitions and it's lightning-fast for everything I need it to do.
It's also worth mentioning that I have said desktop machine because my wife is a pro photographer and Apple and Adobe have colluded for decades to create a kind of "planned obsolescence" whereby professional photographers are ostensibly locked out of the current industry standard unless they run a very recent version of Photoshop that by design isn't compatible with hardware architecture that's more than about 5-years-old.
- Partitioning is good even if you're just running Linux. Specifically separating your / from your /home/ -- In case shit goes wrong you can nuke the OS side and keep all your files and shit. (also, mandatory for UEFI systems cuz you also need a /boot/efi partition)

Just protect bios/uefi with password and windows won't be able to modify any other EFI entry. It worked when i've dual-booted, it should still work.

How can I do that? I'm dual booting but was not aware of this, makes me a little nervous....
- No need to worry, it's in your BIOS under security section. You can check if you set correct one by trying to change boot device: if there's password prompt, you're now safe from windows update "repair".

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White text on a black background reading

'Me: *Dual booting windows and linux.
'Windows: *Updates itself.
'Me: Where is the linux partition?
'Windows:'

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What about stop making bullshit posts? Windows have never did that to me, and there's no reason why would it touch any partition aside from its own and (if it exists) the Windows boot one.

That said, It MIGHT replace MBR boot record but I don't know if that's very likely these days. I remember upgrading from Windows 8 to 10 and Windows left my MBR alone, and I was able to boot to GRUB just fine.

If you install Linux first and then Windows on the same drive, it will fuck up your bootloader.
You can easily make Grub boot Windows, so just overwrite whatever fuckup Windows made, or install Windows first.
It won't happen with a simple update, though, that's for sure. Maybe if you're upgrading Windows to a new major release.
Noooo, not the heckin windorinos, s-stop bullying the multibillion dollar company g-guys ;-;
- Inventing FUD is a bad look regardless of if you're punching up or punching down. It's not about who the target is. It's that FUD is inherently dishonest, and being dishonest reflects poorly on your character.
  The Linux community should try to be better than that. We shouldn't stoop to Microsoft's old level.
  Admittedly, I haven't set up a dual booted Linux machine in about a decade, so I don't know if it's gotten dramatically worse.
- Calling someone out on their bullshit can do that to a person.

to be fair, it actually doesn't know - windows doesn't do ext4...

But it knows there's a partition there and it's easy to know it's a Linux partition type. Microsoft just prefer to say it doesn't know the partition type and simply say it ignores it. You don't need to have support for a file system in order to check it's partition type. It's just ms bs

Whoa.. this really happens? If so that's disgusting and doesn't seem legal. I was about to setup a dual boot for my laptop which has proprietary windows only software I need for work but now I guess i need to research a bit.

I unplug physicals disks when installing windows. Learned the hard way when windows placed the boot partition on a device it could not detect the filsystem of. It destroyed my RAID disks (a little but my fault, because I messed up the recovery).
This is what Windows installer saw (going by memory, this was 8 years ago)
SSD 500 GB (either it recognised ext4 file system, or this one was unknown)
SSD 500 GB (Where I specified to install windows)
4 x HDD 8TB (unknown disks, unknown file system, Windows unaware that this was a RAID-5 software dm-raid)
What did it to? It created a new partition table and wrote data to a new boot partition it made on one of the 8TB disks, no questions asked.
So, to the people who answered you that windows installer cannot do this. Maybe they fixed it. But it certainly could, and it cetianly did. I remember very carefully going through the installer because I was concerned about this happening. I thought about unplugging them, but was lazy. Because "it would be insane for windows to write on a disk it cannot identify the file system of".
Lessons learned:
If you plan to install windows on a disk along side Linux, install windows first, if you can. Safest bet is still to:
If you cannot, unplug all other disks other than the one windows is intended to be on.
Edit: I found post on this way back when, but leaving what I wrote as is.
https://superuser.com/questions/758854/mdadm-win7-install-created-a-boot-partition-on-one-of-my-raid6-drives-how-to-r#1243636
I had remembered some details wrong. I had unplugged the Linux SSD, and it wad raid 6 not 5, and it was 2TB disks.
- Windows couldn't even use its own system image to restore my system when a botched Windows update messed everything up. I still don't know what was wrong but I think it did something like try to apply them as GPT instead of MBR on my BIOS system.
- Fixed or not this is good to know. I use a separate device for RAID storage and I think I'll keep it that way. Sorry you had to deal with that. I know if my main storage got wiped by windows installer my reaction would probably make national news.
  Will proceed with caution and saved drive images!
Whoa.. this really happens?
No, the only thing that windows might do, is reset the bootloader so it skips grub. If you're using UEFI (which you should), you can easily restore it from your bios.
I've only seen it happen on big updates, not the smaller ones.
- As an Ubuntu + Win10 dual booter I had a couple of instances where Windows update destroyed things so irreparably that live Ubuntu boot-repair failed to work, and hours of back-and-forthing error messages to Ubuntu IRC and discord support channels yielded nothing. And I'm too stupid to know any other way of fixing it, so I was SOL. Your milage may vary.
- Have had Windows remove my Grub entry plenty of times but have also had Windows "repair" partitions after a failed update which will nuke your Linux install.
- actually this has happened to me where windows fucked with the file system of both my ext4 Linux OS partition and shared ntfs data partition. A reformat and repartition was the only remedy, so reinstall of the OS and recovery from a backup of the data were required
doesn't seem legal
I wouldn't agree here. Even if Windows does do this (which I doubt), there's no way to prove it isn't a bug. And there's no way anyone's going to sue Microsoft over a bug. Not only is that a gross overreaction, it's financial suicide.
If you don't trust Windows, don't use it. Or if you have to, use it on a separate system/drive.
- Don't need proof that it isn't a bug, it's happened to me multiple times since Windows xp, all the way until the last time I tried dual booting with windows 7...
  At that time, I decided if a game doesn't work in Linux, I don't need it. Luckily dxvk and proton came around that time
  I don't care if it's a bug or if it's intentional. Fuck off windows
Not with EFI boot. If you deliberately use legacy BIOS emulation to boot, it can. So don't do that.
- How'd you install Windows 11 on BIOS? I thought it "required" features unique to EFI?

What? Windows kills other partitions during update?

- Anticompetitive behaviour from microsoft??? gasp
- I can confirm. It does this I think if both OS are on the same disk, probably share bootloader. Never happened when I used separate disks.

Depends on the Distro as some use different boot configs but I had it happen with Pop!OS and did the most logical thing which was wipe my windows partition 🤜🤛

Was that on a system 76 computer? Because it would be fuckin hilarious if they were doing the same scummy shit Microsoft does.

For this reason, I put Linux on an NVMe drive and Windows on an old SSD. Seems to prevent it.

The good old Microsoft way

Embrace Extend Extinguish

The last time windows tried to update, it froze and when i rebooted my laptop, windows broke

Lol which Windows? Windows 98? I installed win 10 on the laptop of my gf after replacing the hdd with an ssd some days ago and one update also froze. But it did not break the os. After rebooting it just removed the update.
- I was using windows 11

Cheryl Blossom? Anyone?

I had this setup 20 years ago. Tried Linux, looked back once because I needed something from the then still unmounted windows partition, dumped the microshit partition 3 months later.

Fuck windows

Tip, just make a seperate EFI partition for Linux. That way, garbage Windows installer won't be able to fuck up your install. Altough this assumes you're running a non-shit EFI mobo that looks for things to boot in every partition.

It senses the competition....

Good meme, I like it. Windows blows. :)

This is what made me jump the gun.

I think the phrase you want is "pull the trigger". "Jump the gun" means to do something too soon, whereas "pull the trigger" means to do something after a wait.
- Nope, I definitely jumped the gun.
  It was Manjaro.

I have the opposite problem. I don’t often boot to windows, but when I do, BitLocker is not happy that I’ve been talking to another operating system.

I assume secure boot is off and your Windows drive/partition is encrypted.

And this is why you should install windows to a docker container on your server and not let it touch anything else. Link to GitHub repo.

Very good meme!

Thank you kind stranger.

Happened to me two weeks ago, not necessarily because of an update, but because of the restart

It saw my entire btrfs distro install on a separate drive as "corrupt", and ran a chkdsk while I was away. Now GRUB shows all my installs but can't boot them anymore.

Boot into Linux using a USB, and fix your boot partition from there.

i had to use Microsoft a while ago, so installed a skin of it, ReviOS to be specific, alongside GNU/Linux. It helped in getting the work done without unwanted updates(which are practically downgrades), and was very fast. coupled with a package manager like scoop it was not that bad experience. even better than MacOS, I'd say.

@cadu@bolha.one

Can anyone smart help me out? I tried to clone my drive and the stupid ass program installed another boot thing. I was able to remove the options in the list, but now I have to wait or hit enter to boot windows 10. Fucking annoying.

Go into Bios to set the default startup partition.
- Thanks. The boot order is already set to windows boot manager> C: system drive. Setting it to just the C: (minus WBM) fails to boot. Uefi is msi.
  The issue is a partition was put on there by Macrium. I deleted it, but the windows boot manager is now borked and now I have to manually select windows 10 or wait for it to time out. This adds a lot of boot time, and it's annoying.

Best to block windows updates, they usually always break things while offering little benefit. Though I never thought dual booting on the same Disk was ever a safe idea with Windows.

The fact that this is something you complain about and that doesn't happen with the majority of other users, probably means something ...

Almost like you guys aren't technologically literate enough to use Windows.

Never happened to me. Fedora had completely deleted Windows bootloader once though and didn't even recognize the existence of Windows on install in the first place.