Can a Windows version upgrade wipe out the dual boot configuration?

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1

In my 2018 HP Omen laptop, I have configured dual boot with Fedora 38 and Windows 10

For faster performance, both Fedora and Windows OS are installed in the NVME drive of my laptop which is 256 GB (238.5 GiB) in size
But, both OSes are installed in the same NVME drive.

Fedora OS runs from /dev/mapper/fedora_rootvg-root which is created from NVME partition /dev/nvme0n1p7 as shown below.
Windows run from /dev/nvme0n1p3 as shown in lsblk output below.

[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ lsblk -d
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda       8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk 
zram0   252:0    0     8G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1 259:0    0 238.5G  0 disk 
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ 


[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ lsblk
NAME                   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda                      8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk 
├─sda1                   8:1    0 398.8G  0 part 
├─sda2                   8:2    0  11.1G  0 part 
└─sda3                   8:3    0   1.3T  0 part 
  ├─fedora_homevg-home 253:1    0   1.3T  0 lvm  /home
  └─fedora_homevg-tmp  253:2    0     8G  0 lvm  /tmp
zram0                  252:0    0     8G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1                259:0    0 238.5G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1            259:1    0   260M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2            259:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p3            259:3    0 132.2G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p4            259:4    0   980M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p5            259:5    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p6            259:6    0     1G  0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p7            259:7    0   102G  0 part 
  └─fedora_rootvg-root 253:0    0   102G  0 lvm  /
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ 



[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ lsblk -f
NAME                   FSTYPE      FSVER    LABEL            UUID                                   FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                                                                
├─sda1                 ntfs                 DATA             7064634064630864                                      
├─sda2                 ntfs                 RECOVERY         827464BC7464B497                                      
└─sda3                 LVM2_member LVM2 001                  wHNz2E-c0od-5U1F-VtsV-we1F-KQZG-FVUTHD                
  ├─fedora_homevg-home ext4        1.0                       bc38b4bc-2776-4903-8b7c-8752678a8b77    684.6G    43% /home
  └─fedora_homevg-tmp  ext4        1.0                       215a3cd6-f958-464b-9349-0b8d54c6bc2e      7.3G     1% /tmp
zram0                                                                                                              [SWAP]
nvme0n1                                                                                                            
├─nvme0n1p1            vfat        FAT32                     DE2A-9102                                             
├─nvme0n1p2                                                                                                        
├─nvme0n1p3            ntfs                 Windows          267A39187A38E5E9                                      
├─nvme0n1p4            ntfs                 Windows RE tools 08AEE9C7AEE9ACFE                                      
├─nvme0n1p5            vfat        FAT32                     C3E4-C3A7                               493.6M     3% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p6            ext4        1.0                       203287c4-c9d1-4d72-ba6a-98acb1adc9eb    625.3M    29% /boot
└─nvme0n1p7            LVM2_member LVM2 001                  RF3oiO-mM3O-AD2Z-lXEd-PNnN-MKuu-bhbkn7                
  └─fedora_rootvg-root ext4        1.0                       4f403c4a-fc50-46dd-aa47-176fecb7acab     56.3G    39% /

-- df output from Fedora 

[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$ df -Th
Filesystem                     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                       devtmpfs  4.0M     0  4.0M   0% /dev
tmpfs                          tmpfs      16G  7.8M   16G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                          tmpfs     6.3G  2.2M  6.3G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/fedora_rootvg-root ext4      100G   39G   57G  41% /
/dev/nvme0n1p6                 ext4      974M  281M  626M  31% /boot
/dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-tmp  ext4      7.8G   57M  7.4G   1% /tmp
/dev/nvme0n1p5                 vfat      511M   18M  494M   4% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/fedora_homevg-home ext4      1.3T  558G  685G  45% /home
tmpfs                          tmpfs     3.2G  3.8M  3.2G   1% /run/user/1000
[sysadmin@localhost:/home/sysadmin]$

My question:

Currently, I run Windows 10. I occasionally boot in to Windows 10. And when I do, Windows always pushes me to upgrade to Windows 11 and I always decline the upgrade option.

This is because, a few years back, I remember reading somewhere that upgrading Windows version in a Windows-Linux dual boot configuration can accidentally overwrite Linux’s GRUB bootloader.
Is this true ?

If so, is there a way I can safely upgrade Windows 10 to 11 but keep Linux’s GRUB intact ?

2

It has been a while since I did this. What I recall is this:

What you may find is that Windows updates the UEFI BIOS to boot windows, bypassing grub.
All you need to do to fix that is go into the BIOS and tell the BIOS to boot the “fedora” entry.
You should still be able to choose Windows from the Grub menu as you do now.

Note: the Grub menu will still claim its Windows 10 but that is cosmetic issuing it will boot Windows 11 you have upgrade to.

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3

I see one potential problem that might become limiting.

It seems windows probably used nvme0n1p1 as its efi partition and fedora uses nvme0n1p5 as its efi partition. This is not the ideal way to manage dual boot. It seems usual to recommend that both OSes share the esp partition since the bios can only use one for booting.

With that arrangement it seems almost certain that the upgrade of windows will force the bios to boot from nvme0n1p1 and thus you could easily lose booting to fedora.

It is common that installing windows after the installation of linux breaks booting to linux and I would expect an upgrade may do the same.

My suggestion –
Do a full backup of data you wish to keep in fedora – probably /dev/sda –
Expand nvme0n1p1 to at least 512MB
delete nvme0n1p5
upgrade windows
reinstall fedora but allow it to use the existing nvme0n1p1 efi partition for /boot/efi instead of having 2 efi partitions on the drive. All the other partitioning should be quite acceptable.

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4

experienced dual booting as windows 11 and multiple difrent Linux systems and best option i saw is install windows on own disk and linux on other. Issues i have had and experienced

Windows updates takes control on boot and grub is gone
each Distro update that affects Kernel forces you to enter Windows Recovery key ( secure boot, encryption enabled )
sometimes boot grub option just wont show up anymore and default/firts on boot order is the one to boot usually Windows 11 takes it, you can still boot normally to Linux just need to boot from BIOS

i might experience this again on Fedora i gave up sometime ago and using VM/WSL mostly

EDIT
installing W10 on second laptop and then going to install F38 Workstation and after that test to upgrade W11

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5

We need to be clear what “update” means.

I use a 2 disk setup one for windows 11 the other for fedora.
I started with windows 11 so on my current rig do not have experience with the 10 to 11 upgrade.

But installing windows 11 updates has not changed the bios config.
It has stayed booting into grub.

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6

i finally got experimenting setup done

bitlocker, secure boot and tpm enabled

fresh install on Windows 10 home → updated all to latest

upgraded Windows 10 homt → Windows 10 pro to get bitlocker enabled

Fedora 38 workstation ( No LUKS ) installation on same nvme since i have only 1 disk on this system

updated Fedora to latest packages

booted back to Windows → asking Recovery key → entered key back to Windows

7 hours trying to upgrade Windows 10 pro to Windows 11 pro from Windows 11 installation assistant since upgrade didint show up on Windows upgrade on that time and this one failed 3 times on 99% → finally got pop up from Windows upgrade to upgrade Windows 11

after succesfully upgraded Windows to Windows 11 pro it did not wipe or F up dual boot system. Everything works as it was before only i have new OS versions and same old Grub Bootloader shows up as fine so i can conclude this was successfully completed

Edit
Test was made fedora without encryption on fedora

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