This is why I no longer dual boot and removed windows all together.

I built a computer in 2012 with the idea of having 3 OSes to boot from: Windows 7, Mac OS 10.7 (hackintosh), and CentOS.

I partition the drive into three main parts, and install each OS on one each. Except that I had to do it again, because Windows 7 lost its absolute shit that it wasn't on the first partition. Just threw an absolute shit-fit that it didn't come first.

So I re-do the installations, let Windows be first in the partition order, Mac OS second, CentOS third. The next problem was that I couldn't download any drivers on Windows, because it couldn't recognize the absolutely bog-standard network controller on my motherboard. So I boot into Mac OS X, which (with a couple of quick kext edits) already recognized all of the hardware on the mobo despite none of it being Apple or Apple related, download the drivers for windows, throw them on a FAT partition I set up to exchange data between the OSes, and finally get Windows running in about 4x the time it took to get Mac OS running on the exact same built-for-windows hardware I'd cobbled together.

And of course I fire up CentOS, and it was pretty much, "I got this" right off the bat.

I've been using Windows and Mac OS since the late 80s, and linux since about 1999, and I still have never encountered a more fussy OS than Windows.

If you do want windows do this....put windows on a sacrificial drive.... Promise to yourself that there's just garbage in there so it doesn't matter... Install Linux on another drive. Have your computer start from the Linux drive thru grub. Set up grub to recognize the windows drive. No, no matter how hard that bitch ass OS tries to update your godly Linux install, it won't find anything. Fuck you Microsoft! Knowledge is power. Now go out there and compute.

Maybe we should speak to them in a language they actually speak. In this case, I am thinking the proper language is class action lawsuit.

Considering Bill Gates made it, you can expect it to be grabby and invasive.

this is why we don't dual-boot with Windows anymore. Linux only. No computing device in my household runs on any version of Windows

Everyone saying you need two harddrives needs to know: all you need are 2 efi partitions: one for windows one for linux.. You can have them on the same drive. It's nonstandard, but I have never found a machine where it doesn't work.

No, slopOS is not a cute cat.

In my experience, Windows only fucks-up your Linux bootloader if they both share the same EFI System Partition. Keeping them separate fixes the issue. Though, this means that you'll have to install Windows first, since it will automatically pick your Linux ESP otherwise.

I mean, that's what happens when you install spyware; it infects things...

please don't equate cats with windows

I went nuclear, when gaming was still hit or miss (only wine existed) since I only installed windows to update my BIOS. I advise to use a separate harddrive and do not do as I did: Used gparted to separate space for windows in my data drive, installed, updated the BIOS, used gparted to recover my initial state. I was sweating the whole time, but all of my data was intact.

Windows 11 is just unusable junk. Makes Vista and ME look like masterpieces

is there a way to avoid this? and what workflow should be in place ahead of it happening if not?

Dual booting may be a bad idea. You should run MAS-activated Windows in a VM.

I've had one issue in the past year and a half, dual booting from the same NVMe.
After fixing the boot partition issues from a liveUSB, the actual solution was disabling fast-boot.
It's been solid for a year now.

But I always shutdown my laptop when I'm not using it. And any windows updates that require restarts, I make sure it fully reboots into windows again.

I haven't had this problem. I use two hard drives and when I boot windows I boot it off the drive its installed to.

Dumb windows

I did not realize the beer McConaughey was drinking in True Detective was a real brand

Hell yeah, accessibility text!

My Windows partition at work went unused for several months before I wiped it.

At home it took about two weeks before I reclaimed that space!

This was always really funny to me. Gonna do an update behind my back? Great. Go ahead lol

It's really funny when you have grub configured with linux as the default. Then when you select windows it's 50% chance it'll update something and reboot, booting you back to linux lmao. I guess they don't really want me to use it.

I haven't had this problem since the early years of Windows 10 and that was because I was still on GPT+CSM boot. I ran the 10 to 11 upgrade blind and it just worked without torching my Linux install. As annoying as UEFI is it fixed most of the OS clash issues

I use to have windows 11 on a separate drive until an update broke windows and the drive. I've been happier ever since.

"If I fits, I sits"