Accidental Dual Boot Windows 8.1 Manjaro
 

Hi all,

I have had Manjaro for a few months now and getting along well with it.

My initial plan for install was add a second hard drive and point the manjaro installer to this new drive, then leave windows and the main boot then use the bios boot menu to select the linux drive when I wanted that.

It didn't happen the way I was expecting and now I have a dual boot screen when I boot the machine I get a manjaro boot loader, if I take either drive out nothing works.

Is there a way without reinstalling each to get them working the way I want.

Check the boot order of the disks in the bios.

Also, you probably need to add a windows chainloader to your grub2 configuration. I haven't done it in a while. I'm sure it's well documented.

Which windows are you using? Newer windows (8 and newer) default to using UEFI. Older systems use MBR. An explanation for the results you are getting is with an MBR install you installed Grub to the MBR of the first drive pointing to the Grub files on the second drive. If you have UEFI, there is generally an EFI partition on one drive. Same result. Can't be any more specific with the information you provided.

I don't think the bios boot order has anything to do with it, what I want to do is have each os on each drive then just boot whichever I want with the bios boot menu selector.

I am using 8.1 at the moment.

Did you look at the Manjaro wiki ?. Took no time to find the page to re-install grub - seems pretty comprehensive. Do that first to get the external working as you want. Then boot into Win8 and create a recovery disk. Use that to recover the internal boot loader.

That should do it. Actually, create the Win8 recovery disk ASAP, to make sure you have it when you need it.

I did see that yes on the wiki, just wanted some confirmation first before I piled in, I have an image on my system in case anything goes wrong.

Will give it a try and update.

Hi all, I managed to run through the fix on the wiki about the grub loader so all is working, I can have either drive work without the other one being plugged in.

Thanks very much for your help.