Dual Boot UEFI Window 10 Centos 7.4 - helpful hints

[TrevorH]

First, 1611 is no longer the most recent, it's been superceded by 1708.

Second, rufus is marked as sometimes being problematic for creating USB sticks depending on the options used. The symptoms of "bad" usb stick creation utilities is that they corrupt the UEFI boot capabilities of the USB stick which sounds exactly like what you're reporting. Try using dd or rawrite on Windows - use the links in http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey to get know-to-work copies of those if you need them.

[desertcat]

Quick followup.

i) After one round of Windows updates that succeeded, but partially failed (why failure? unclear... could be because the update happened yesterday, Oct 17th, and it was the first day for the release of the so called "Fall Creators Update") at least the updates that did succeed didn't alter my boot screen. I was still able to dual boot both win10 and CentOS 7.4

ii) In reply to desertcat's suggestions about using VM, and why UEFI etc.

Thx for the suggestions, but I don't think VM is for me. I use some memory intensive applications and want to minimize the footprint of the OS. Also, my gut tells me that running one OS inside another may have it's own set of issues that I'd prefer to not layer on top of the usual host of difficulties when faced with debugging something that isn't working right. Perhaps I'm wrong and using a VM is smooth as silk and no different than what I'm doing, but I doubt it.

So why UEFI? Good question.

Along the way, when I was inadvertently trying to install Windows & CentOS, but mistakenly failing to do it in UEFI mode, the win10 installer prevented me from using anything other than a DOS formatted disk. I believe that was limiting how many partitions could be made on the disk, so when I installed CentOS it ended up stomping on some Windows partitions and consequently win10 became unrecoverable and couldn't be repaired (thus my repeated adnauseum number of reinstalls - I had my windows key memorized that's how many times I did it).

When I reformatted the disk to be gpt - (using gdisk or fdisk) the Windows installer would NOT let me install win10 - and apparently it's because I was still trying to install it in non-UEFI mode. As soon as I made the discovery above about how to actually get win10 to install in UEFI mode, everything clicked, including the CentOS install.

Maybe other people have been able to dual boot both win10 and centOS 7 from one disk, but I was unable to do it w/o UEFI mode being active.

Thanks again to everyone who pitched in ideas to help me out!

I feel your pain, I really do. We are now up to Reason 1,000,003 of "Why I hate Windows". [Here is reason 1,000,002:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cybera ... 35715.html].

Ideally the BEST solution would be to run CentOS 7 as a VM under / in a Windows VD.

The second BEST idea would be to run Windows 10 on its own UEFI enabled disk, and install CentOS 7.4 on its own Non-UEFI (BIOS) HDD or SSD. Another idea you could consider is the reverse option: Install CentOS 7.4 as the base OS and run Win 10 as a VM inside CentOS 7.4.

A third option might be simply add more RAM.... assuming, that is, your mobo is NOT maxed out already. Some of these "Home User" computers max out at 4-8 GB, and are maxed out right out of the box. VMWare Player (FREE) is very easy to install, and creating a VM is not that difficult. With luck you'll somehow find a way to dual boot your machine, and that will solve your problem. But if you are the adventurous type simply download a copy of VMWare Player for Windows -- it is FREE -- and simply play with it.

Win 10 is huge and even as a VM it eats up disk space (ask me how I know) CentOS 7.4 as large as it is, it is but a tiny fraction of what Win 10 is, and other distros are even smaller. The latest Fedora is even smaller that CentOS, the trade off is you live life on the "Bleeding Edge". The nice thing about a VM: it is an ON-DEMAND thing , ie. it does NOT run in the background unless you want it to. You want to run programs in Linux, go to the procedure is 1) go to the VMWare Player Icon 2) Click on it 3) Select the VM you want to run 4) Click on it which starts the boot sequence. When you are do click on the Linux Logout button, which will terminate the program, and kill the VM returning any memory it was using back over to the system. A VM will not brick your system it is just another program. A VM also allows you to test out an OS and experiment with it to see if your actually want to install it as your base OS or not. I don't use Windows; I do not LIKE Windows; Windows is a horror show to me, yet I have several Windows VM's that I keep on reserve just in case my sister, step-brother, et. al. have something go wrong with their Window based machines, I just need to find the VM and fire it up, and then all they need to do is describe to me what their problem is (frequently it is User Error), and I can then see if I can find a hack or solution. Then I KILL the VM and let it go back into hibernation. Indeed a VM is the greatest Utility you will ever have because it allows you to TEST OS's without un-installing your base OS. , and indeed you don't even need to log out / off of the computer.

As I said earlier probably the limiting factor is the amount of RAM you have. Yes I've had a VM run on a computer with as little as 4 GB, but you really want a computer with 8+ GB, and you also want at least a dual core processor. "Home User" computers that are 5+ years old probably don't have the horsepower to run a VM, but many of today's "Home User" computers can easily run a VM. If you have one of today's serious "Gaming" computers or a Workstation, VM won't even hiccup on those.

I sincerely hope you can figure out how to dual boot your machine. I know it can be done, but knowing the special spells and incantations, and what special ingredients -- Eye of Newt, Powdered Tadpole, Dragon's Blood, etc. -- are needed. There probably Window Wizards here who can help you cast the necessary spell to allow you to dual boot your machine. Me?!? I'm lazy: VM are a lot easier to do!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

[jimbux]

Code: Select all

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\centos\shim.efi

Now... the question as to whether or not it sticks after the next window update. Any predictions anyone?

Old thread - I know, but I FINALLY got the "Fall Creator's Update" to update my win-10 install.

So, it appears that minor updates don't mess with the boot-manager, which means updates on win-10 that require rebooting will still leave Grub active. HOWEVER, it appears that the major updates, such as the so-called "Fall Creators Update" WILL mess with the boot-manager, but the good news is that rerunning that bcdedit command above (in admin-mode in a cmd shell) fixes it again.

James.

[jimbux]

<...snip...> Ideally the BEST solution would be to run CentOS 7 as a VM under / in a Windows VD.

<...snip...> A third option might be simply add more RAM....

<...snip...> The latest Fedora is even smaller that CentOS, the trade off is you live life on the "Bleeding Edge".

<...snip...> I sincerely hope you can figure out how to dual boot your machine. I know it can be done,...

Very old thread - apologies for not having thanked you for that thoughtful reply before. Here are a couple of quick follow-up thoughts.

I have a machine with a ton (32G) of memory on it so I could follow your options, however I want to MAXIMIZE the amount available to the programs I run. I'm a visual effects artist and need a shit-ton of memory for many of the apps I use, so that's one reason I'm avoiding VMs. Also, like I pointed out earlier, it's one more layer for something to go wrong or another layer of mystery to deal with when something isn't working - so again, I'm avoiding it. It might be great for someone who only occasionally wants to use either Windows OR Linux, but when I'm working on either OS, it's intensive usage.

I used Fedora for a LONG TIME but I ended up resenting the short lifespan of the versions, so I moved to CentOS, besides they use CentOS at ILM, so if it works for them, then it'll work for me. Also, I'm not "adventurous" nor someone who desires to live "on the bleeding edge" - I'd be happy to use the first version of 'vi' that came out in the late 70's if that's any clue.

Finally - the procedures that I've outlined above do in fact work and I have a fully functional dual-boot system at this point.

Again, thanks DesertCat (and everyone else on this forum) for the help along the way. Using Linux is impossible without communities like this - so y'all are appreciated greatly!

Cheers, James.

[brunofl]

I did check in my computer I have the following EFI files:
[img]

EFI_CENTOS.PNG (64.4 KiB) Viewed 2825 times

[/img]

I would like your help on which one I should use to execute the mentioned bcedit command because I used the way mentioned above but the boot did not find the file/path.

Code: Select all

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\CENTOS\SHIM64.EFI