Restoring dual boot

Danwilliams1989 · 02-19-2018, 11:27 PM

Hi guys.

I have a Lenovo yoga 500 dual booted with Ubuntu and windows 10.

Ive never had a dual booted laptop before. How would you restore it if you needed to.
Also is it possible to restore one without the other.

Any YouTube videos would help if you have any up your sleeves.

Brains · 02-20-2018, 01:19 AM

Windows 10 typically has a +-20GB partition with recovery images at the back end of your drive. While running Windows 10, you create a recovery drive or recovery DVDs which you can later use to recover. Typically you'll have two options, one brings it back to the same shape as it was when new, the second option only refreshes Windows leaving your data and Ubuntu intact.

For Ubuntu, you can either reinstall from the Live CD or make a backup image with dd or one of a thousand or so backup imaging software and restore the image. If it's a UEFI computer, you would also want to back up the System EFI partition that contains the boot files.

As for links, Google does a great job providing thousands, unless there is more to your question.
Image for Dos from this outfit will backup the whole drive in compressed, data only format, works great, 'tis the one I use. Automatic, backup to DVD, USB external drive, network drives etc.

Brains · 02-20-2018, 02:46 AM

Anyway:
Most people here don't realize when they alter the partitions of a computer that came with Windows 10 pre-installed to install Linux, they typically disable their recovery environment. If you open a command prompt in Windows 10 and fire the command in the example below, it should look like the example below, if not, your recovery environment may not work. The example below shows it is enabled, the WinRE.wim location, and the recovery image(s) location. The WinRE.wim is Microsoft's half of the deal and is what you'll see first, it asks what you want to do and gives many options including a command prompt to fix your system if needed. The recovery image section is the OEM half of the recovery process, Windows will ensure, once every now and then, that it's half will work. But that only happens when every now and then, not always enabled till a certain large update checks up on it. The command to check your recovery environment is in blue.

Code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /Info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: e3109268-c222-11e7-92b3-c498475d61ab
    Recovery image location:   \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk1\partition2\RecoveryImage
    Recovery image index:      1
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

Danwilliams1989 · 02-20-2018, 04:32 AM

I had it put on by a professional. So hopefully he hasn’t. Does that mean it could affect me from doing a clean install from scratch of windows 10??? I hope not

Danwilliams1989 · 02-20-2018, 04:32 AM

Thank you for the info guys I’m struggling with some of the terminology but got the gist I think