Preparing/Protecting Fedora 32 for a Dual Boot Win10 installation

Hey guys,

Thank you in advance for anyone taking the time. I love Fedora 32 it’s awesome, just fallen in love with this OS. Due to work I will have to be installing Windows 10 pro as well, big bummer. Soooo sorry for such a newbie question, but I’ve never done this before in that order:

I see various documentation on how to install Fedora 32 AFTER you have installed Windows. But I see nothing on how to install Windows when you already have Fedora installed. I’m afraid the windows installer is just going to mess up my OS. Though I have already made a back-up.

I’ve searched and searched but I failed on seeing anything, is there any discussion/documentation you guys can reffer me to?

I have prepared an NTFS partition for this purpose, I leave my configuration as shown in gparted here :

If not, does anyone have any pointers on how to succeed this god-forsaken task? Shall I just jump into it?

My info below:

OS: Fedora release 32 (Thirty Two) x86_64
Host: HP Laptop 15-db0xxx
Kernel: 5.7.7-200.fc32.x86_64
Packages: 1981 (rpm)
Shell: bash 5.0.17
Resolution: 1366x768
WM: Mutter(Gala)
Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3]
Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3]
Terminal: io.elementary.t
CPU: AMD A9-9425 RADEON R5 2C+3G (2) @ 3.100GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon R2/R3/R4/R5 Graphics
Memory: 2797MiB / 3812MiB

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Hi,

I maybe out of date here, but the recommendation to install windows first is because if its installed 2nd; it tends to overwrite grub so fedora will no-longer boot. Probably fix able with a linux live usb and reinstalling grub, should detect both the windows & fedora install.

May be easier to to install windows 10 as a virtual machine.

If you have spare drive, you could give this ago. Install windows with the fedora drive disconnected (shutdown to disconnect) install windows. Shutdown again and reconnect drive. Big downside of this method is changing the primary drive in the bios, when you want to change OS.

Thanks Tom.

2 Likes

Thank you Thom for your answer.

I can’t use a VM at this low level netbook and doesnt have space really for a another drive, so in order to keep things portables I will then take the choice of reading the documentation on how to fix grub. Which takes me to: when you say windows overwrites grub, you mean it erase my grub partitions?

I’ll see you on the other side, thanks for the encouragement.

Nachosan

Hi,

Windows tends just to install its own bootloader and nukes whats there.

I’ve done googling and produced a few methods for restoring grub, you may even have some luck using bcedit from windows.

Alternatively it may be easier to back up your /home (just case its needed if something goes wrong). Install windows (I’d be half tempeted to delete the the ntfs partition and let the Windows installer manage the partitioning of the free space.) Then reinstall fedora in the same way you original installed it, but when setting up /home & reformat tick box is un-ticked. When setting up the user, use your current user.

Thanks Tom.

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On MBR/BIOS-based systems, it does for sure. I haven’t installed Windows in a long time, but on UEFI systems it might not wipe the ESP completely but just install it’s own loader onto it, since there is technically no reason to do so. It still might.

If it does, fixing that is a simple matter of

  1. booting from a Linux Live CD,
  2. mounting the partitions & chrooting into the Fedora system
  3. reinstalling GRUB to the ESP (GRUB plays nice, it won’t touch the Windows installer).

See for example the invaluable Arch Linux wiki for an explanation of how to do that. The instructions are for Arch Linux, but Fedora works the same, other than the ESP being mounted to /boot/efi on Fedora but most often /boot on Arch.

4 Likes

Nice lcts and tjdoyle, thank you for the info I will try this and post the result.

Keeping the fingers crossed.

:crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers:

Nachosan

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+1 to installing Windows first. Unlike Windows, Fedora knows how to deal with setting up dual boot.
One complication with dual boot is that bitlocker encryption of the windows partition will be a problem. Every time fedora updates grub bitlocker will refuse to boot normally because the code path to bitlocker has changed, or something like that.
The only way I know of to keep bitlocker happy would be to avoid going thru grub, always boot windows using the BIOS boot menu to boot the windows partition directly.

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+1 , first WinNT, then Linux with the the grub where setting up on sda
because WinNT want and must be in the first partition installing… the grub2 can handle the normal boot from sda1 or from sda2 , 1gig swap for linux and behind the hugh datasaving partition with your 160 gig.
and yes, let the bitlocker away ! It makes mostly a worst case senario ! A Normal install of WinNT and you have not trubles…

what’s be the 2 small partitions ?

normally take a bootiso/usbstick with gparted, make 4 Primary partitions.(it be only 4 Primarys possible in one Harddisk)

25Gig 25Gig 1Gigswap 160Data

by install can you for WinNT kill the first partition in the manual partitioning System setup and say, install it on the Empty Space and WinNt make his needed spaces on this emty space(normally), later take fedora and install it and let format the sda2 as / ext4 and say the Swap is this 1gig partition in anaconda (manualpartitioning…) and later can you add the Datapartion with kpartion or partitionsmanager or what’s in Fedora used for bind in the partions…

best
Blacky

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