5 Free Boot Managers – Dual Boot Windows And Linux

23 Comments

1. 

   RobG [ Reply ]

   Great article. But personally I now avoid trying to dual boot Windows and Linux since it has always resulted in major problems over the years trying to boot into Windows (Google Windows / Linux dual boot problems). Instead I just Live Boot Linux from a USB stick now and again….using Windows as my main OS

   • 

     Wan [ Reply ]

     At first that is the case, but when you get to know how things actually works its just easy to fix those errors.

     • 

       bill [ Reply ]

       I have been building dual boot systems for customers for 20 seperate years.
       Eventually all dual boot systems always crashes.
       Now i always 2 drives, that reduces failures by 90%, so Robs 2 drive approach is
       the best way to go, unless you do not care about your files,
       I even have triple boot customer and systems with seperate drives are solid.

   • 

     JB [ Reply ]

     If your having a problem duo booting windows is because you lack the experience.

     • 

       Shad Beckering [ Reply ]

       if u call it duo boot u lack knowledge

2. 

   Hikari [ Reply ]

   Indeed, dual boot Win+Lix is a thing of the past. Now, anybody seriously considering using both, will have a secondary miniPC which he connects remotely, or a PC capable of running a couple VMs while confortably using host OS.

   What I want an advanced bootloader is to help me troubleshoot any sad issue I might have, and most importantly to be able to boot from ISO stored directly on HD so that I can boot backup manager and a few other stuff without needing to have them on USB and plug it every time I need them.

   With a bootloader I can just keep my isos updated on HD and boot them whenever I want.

   • 

     Kevin van Zyl [ Reply ]

     unraid setup is great. you can have mutlple systems. For gaming you can pass through all the hardware to the OS

3. 

   Thomas McNicholas [ Reply ]

   I’m the opposite to RobG in that I dual boot Linux and Windows with Grub. Linux (KDE on Arch) is my primary OS, windows I might use a couple of times during the year. If I could run windows on a live usb stick I probably wouldn’t dual boot at all but dual booting is convenient.

   • 

     lee norton [ Reply ]

     read an article recently about a program which lets u run windows from a flash drive not sure what it was called but might worth looking into, if not you could always buy a usb/ssd to run windows from

     • 

       Ongytenes [ Reply ]

       My experience in the past was Wndoze sending an update and knocking out GRUB. I took to using two drives. I disconnected my Windoze drive and installed my Linux distros on the new drive. Since I went a year or more without booting into Windoze, I just used the MB boot selector menu to boot Windoze. Over the years I’ve booted less and less. It has been several years now that I’ve used Windoze.

4. 

   nictou [ Reply ]

   Dual booting only works for me, when i am using separate HDs for each OS. I had trouble with aggressive Win10 updates messing with the Manjaro setup on the same hardrive. Simply took a spare 256gb Samsung SSD and smashed windows (ReviOS) on it. Just for games i can not get to run on linux or some odd school software the kids have to use, etc. When needed i switch to windows in the bios boot order.

   • 

     CapnAhab [ Reply ]

     This is how I do it too – grub menu will take me to Ubuntu Mate (default), Arch Linux or Win10. All 3 OS are on their own drives – I can also share data on the various partitions between the 3 OS.

5. 

   Thomas C [ Reply ]

   I am currently using 2 1tb ssd’s to boot windows, and linux (mint). I use the escape key at initialize to swap boot device with bios. Works great. My problem as of late is that I still have a linux boot using Mint that comes up when I boot to the 2nd drive (linux mint) when I select that partition/drive. Also, that drive has 2 different Mint bootable partitions, so I can pick one of 3 different setup’s. Sounds complicated, but it works. I don’t need the 2 linux os’s but it is no big deal, except for some lost disk space between the 2 partitions. I figure I am about half nuts anyway…..\

6. 

   John Ho [ Reply ]

   For me however, I am more for dual booting, nay even multibooting windows 10 with several linux distros in two SSD. So far, for nearly a year, I encounter no problem even though I subscribe to the ‘Windows insider’s program’ with frequent updates (now even to the pre-windows 11 stage). Moreover, when I boot into any Linux distro, it typically takes less than 1 minute to load. As a matter of fact, I enjoy since more than 15 years ago, installing Windows, and other OS in a multiboot environment (before using a commercial boot manager). Finally, my PC is already a few years old though still capable of using UEFI instead of BIOS.

7. 

   Michael [ Reply ]

   Ya no doubt, I had YEARS of not being able to multi-boot, But when I finally figured out Linux and Windows Dual boot, LORD it was easy to fix In Ubuntu!

   Now I Have Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Mint, and Android-X86!

   • 

     Tristan [ Reply ]

     I used to have tri boot between windows ubuntu and Prime OS. it used to work flawlesly using the Prime OS Bootloader until i upgraded to windows 11.

8. 

   jelabarre59 [ Reply ]

   Doing some boot-time disk shuffle only works for desktops. If you want to do that on a laptop you’re likely limited to just one HDD. Although dual-booting Linux & MSWin means you can’t use LUKS disk encryption At least not yet, unless someone manages to develop a LUKS driver for MSWin; and you know MS will never be able to make BitLocker work for Linux.

   For the most part I’d just run MSWin as a VM.

   The particular use-case I’m looking at now is how to do a MSWin98/MSWin2000/Linux multi-boot on a ThinkPad T23 as a retro-computer. I used to just do hard-drive swapping, but I’m concerned I’ll eventually damage the drive-bay connector. I figured on having a W98 partition, W2K partition for the retro stuff, and the Linux partition for managing images of the two MSWin setups so I can wipe and restore as needed.

9. 

   Philip Cooper [ Reply ]

   I suspect, like me there will be many people driven to go dual-boot with Windows & Linux now by Microsoft’s inability/refusal to make their perfectly good Windows pc’s upgradeable to Windows 11, added to the ease, almost-nil cost & flexibility of using Linux! – I’d ditch Windows altogether if it wasn’t for the fact that some programs I use regularly only come in Windows versions ….. grrrrrrrr.

10. 

    Neil Murphy [ Reply ]

    I am Dual booting Linux (default) and Win 10 usi9ng grub2 (I think) on my Lenovo E575 laptop. Will any of these replace grub2?

11. 

    owd [ Reply ]

    Thanks for the great information. I am wondering if it’s possible to switch OS remotely. Right now I am using Jump Desktops (Remote Desktop connection) to use Win10 on a remote computer. If I also want Linux on that remote computer and sometimes want to switch between Win10 and Linux, does any boot manager allow setting/switching boot order in Win10 & Linux?
    I could use a Linux VM but worry full resources are not available in the Linux guest VM for machine learning (GPU, CPU, etc).
    Thanks

12. 

    aaaaaaa [ Reply ]

    many old devices such as tvboxes with CPU of 1.5 Ghz & above (like those of s905) can be revived if a good debloated win11 ARM can be installed on them (by dual booting with their android or linux-based OS ). but no android app with seamless operation and multi boot support have been made to date

13. 

    sinzero311 [ Reply ]

    Ventoy can boot most OSes from a single flash drive…simply by copying the iso to a folder it creates. even have a version for making a bootable usb using your (android) phone

14. 

    George [ Reply ]

    Like some of you, I am also trying to run in dual boot mode for Mint and Windows 10. I need Win10 for Adobe CC, Topaz and Quicken. But for those, I’d leave Windows completely. I have Mint on one SSD (1TB) and Win10 on a separate SSD (512 GiB). I have plenty of other room and a strong i7 processor.

    I found EasyBCD to be disappointing. It isn’t really truthful about the free version because it doesn’t handle Micro$oft restrictions. And if you want the add-on repair, you pay for it. If you can’t convince me with a free version, it feels like a bait and switch. As for rEFInd, I had it working last December with Ubuntu and thought it was great. Maybe I should have left well enough alone, but I really like Mint. Now, I can’t seem to get it to uninstall fully and/or reinstall — and the instructions are hard to follow.

    I wish this were easier.