I am running a laptop with dual boot Windows 10 and Fedora 40. Grub works as it should. Whenever I boot my laptop, it appears no problem on boot. I have Windows as my default entry for grub. Whenever I reboot from Windows to Windows again, it works flawlessly. The issue consists when I reboot from Fedora, and grub doesn’t come up but boots directly to Windows. It always does this. It acts as some sort of cycle. Where after booting to the second OS, it wants to boot to the primary without asking.
I have tried for a while now to tweak settings in the grub, but to no success. I managed to fix this issue once when I installed a theme on grub, but didn’t understand how I fixed it. To my avail, thinking I wouldn’t touch grub again, the next kernel update it rested it as it was.
I have tried to make Fedora as my primary entry and the same happens to the Windows in this case the second OS, after rebooting it grub won’t show and would boot directly to Fedora.
I haven’t seen any other topics regarding this problem to any other OS. I am still a beginner trying to figure out Fedora, I have a couple of months searching for a solution but to no avail.
Looking forward to hearing your advices and experiences.
I have to wonder how you set windows to be the default for booting.
On every dual boot system I have used the default has always been the latest installed fedora kernel.
The grub menu is normally displayed by default during boot as well when dual booting and is hidden when only fedora is installed.
The content of the grub env file can be seen with sudo grub2-editenv - list.
A user may unhide or hide the grub menu by setting it within the environment file using sudo grub2-editenv - unset menu_auto_hide or sudo grub2-editenv - set menu_auto_hide=1.
The system can be configured to save the most recently used boot entry as the default by editing the file /etc/default/grub and adding the option GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true at the end of that file, followed by sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. This then would add the variable save_default=true into the output of the list from the grub env file shown above.
When doing so, now the system always saves the last booted kernel/OS as the default for the next boot. Setting the default in this way means that to change the default it is only necessary to select a different option from the grub menu (which means the grub menu has to be visible).
Yes, I have Fedora for the BIOS. The problem doesn’t consist there. It works fine, as I mentioned. Problem is I think since I am dual booting I think there is some sort of cycle going on where after rebooting from Windows and booting to Fedora works fine. After I reboot from Fedora, it boots me directly to Windows. Only on this case, does this anomaly occur, as all the other times grub works as it should.
This sounds like Windows “Fast Startup”, which is really hibernation. Some systems have it as a BIOS setting, but you should be able to disable it in Windows. Some Windows updates will enable it (maybe the updates that reboot multiple times).
I disabled according to your guide. I have still hibernation enabled as I do use that, but still the same sistuation. Should I also try to remove hibernation as well?
Hybernation on recent systems with SSD’s can be more trouble than it is worth for the small amount of time and battery power saved when booting Windows.
UEFI “BIOS” update: your UEFI “BIOS” may not fully support dual boot configurations. Check with the vendor for updates or use Fedora’s fwupdtool.
change GRUB_DEFAULT to saved.
in a Fedora terminal, use efibootmgr to get the hex value XXXX assigned to Fedora and thensudo efibootmgr -n XXXX to set the hex value of BootNext to the Fedora value. On my dual boot system, BootNext is not set and Fedora is first in the BootOrder list.
enabling the Gnome menu to see if that comes up when rebooting from linux,
disabling hibernation in Windows.
Posting the details of your system (e.g., output from inxi -Fzxx) may help others with the same problem find this topic.
Dear George, I thank you very much for your time and information you provided. I read the hibernation docs and links and learned some new things, however I still can’t remove hibernation as it helps with my productivity.
I tried first the Fedora’s fwupdtool and didn’t find any updates for my firmware.
I tried before to change GRUB_DEFAULT to saved and what it does is saves the last system you booted, I don’t want that. I only want grub to appear at all times when I boot my system. This skips the grub completely.
I also tried efibootmgr to change the BootNext, but again I want grub to be shown not to boot on system directly.
Gnome menu does come up after rebooting from Linux.
Here are also my system details. I will do a fresh installation of Fedora as I don’t like my current setup anymore, so I will see if this problem still occurs there.
I am leaving this thread still open as I haven’t found the solution yet, but this is the closest I have been so far.
I assume you mean Windows hybernation. When Windows is hybernating you can’t boot Fedora.
I can understand how hybernation helps: I only need Windows when reporting problems with artifacts to creators in large enterprises who only have “corporate standard” Windows. I’ve noticed that booting Windows can be a slow process, and for my use case I need to apply updates to ensure the problem isn’t fixed with an update – this week that took most of an afternoon and part of the following morning. I use WSL in Windows to get access to Linux. I have used Whitewater Foundary Fedora remix for WSL but currently have Debian in order to check that things I do in Fedora will not break in Debian. In my field, it is common for users to have Windows workstations to read the memos from HQ, but use command-line and web interfaces (Rstudio, Jupyter, etc.) with remote corporate cloud data centre systems for actual work.
Fedora runs well on the inexpensive “refurbished” systems being dumped by large enterprises because a) they don’t meet the Windows 11 requirements, and b) desktops are no longer suitable due to changes like work from home with shared cubicles at work. You might find that having a dedicated system for Fedora helps productivity.
God dammit, this has been the solution all the time! How come I didn’t come across this thread. Its in the thread but for anyone else coming across this problem don’t forget after inserting the command run sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
in order to save the config. It is in the thread that you shared but just in case anyone forgets it.
Thank you, thank you a ton! I also appreciate all the replies of everyone in this thread. I am closing this thread now.
