Whenever I tried to install Linux alongside Windows 10 on my HP Compaq Elite 83000 it would always boot into Windows. Using a USB drive with rEFInd as first boot option allows to boot both operating systems. It seems that it’s hardcoded into the Firmware to always prefer Windows if available. So in this Post I’ll show how I use rEFInd as my boot manager to make stubborn HP’s dual boot.
I created the USB drive with rEFInd as my boot manager during the Arch Linux installation process. Doing it that way I did not install Grub, but let only rEFInd handle boot loading since it won’t work without it anyways. When doing this during an Arch Linux install this can be done when it comes to installing a boot loader.
If your Linux installation comes with Grub or you already installed it, it should work nonetheless. You will probably be able to select the Windows boot loader or Grub through rEFInd.
I had an old 4 GB USB drive laying around, so I just used this. First we want to format the drive accordingly. I used fdisk for that.
Either during your Arch Linux install or when booted into your Linux installation.
NOTE The last time I tried to dual boot Windows and Linux, without a boot manager on the USB drive, it booted Linux fine after installing but stopped working after booting Windows the first time after the install. If you can’t boot Linux either select to boot the grub.efi manually or use a live environment.
(If you’re not logged in as root you need to use sudo) check your drive:
$ fdisk -l
I’m writing /dev/sdx as a symbolic disc, yours will most likely be different.
create new gpt partition table:
$ fdisk /dev/sdx
Command (m for help): g
create new partition (at least 100 MB) I just created one of 1 GB, which is plenty:
Command (m for help): n
just accept all the defaults and write 1G for end sector.
Then change the partition type to EFI (1) and write to disk:
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1, default 1): 1
Partition type or alias (type L to list all): 1
Command (m for help): w
Now we need to format it to fat32, so:
$ mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sdx1
After that we mount the USB drive and create a EFI directory
$ mkdir /tmp/usbefi/
$ mount /dev/sdx1 /tmp/usbefi
$ mkdir /tmp/usbefi/EFI
unmount the usb drive
$ umount /dev/sdx1
The easiest way to install rEFInd is to use the refind-install script which should be available through your Linux package manager.
On Arch Linux it works like this, after getting the script it should be the same for other distros as well.
Installing the rEFInd install script:
$ pacman -S refined-install
Then we install rEFInd on the USB drive with:
$ refind-install --usedefault /dev/sdx1
this should be good to go, at least for basic setup.
As described in the manual the --usedefault option installs rEFInd as EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi and is intended for creating bootable USB flash drives.
Now we reboot and go into UEFI-BIOS and set the USB drive first in the boot order.
After installing microcode you can add a boot option to rEFInd as explained here.
To create the refined_linux.conf use the command mkrlconf which automatically creates the file in /boot/.
After that you should edit it to add the ucode option for the first entry as described in the link above.
Then as mentioned in the Arch wiki we need to change the refind.conf which is in the EFI partition, in this case on the USB drive.
We mount the USB drive
$ mkdir /tmp/usbefi/
$ mount /dev/sdx /tmp/usbefi/
and then open the EFI/BOOT/refind.conf and uncomment the extra_kernel_version_strings line as described in the wiki.
now it should boot.
If it breaks the boot process and goes into a emergency shell mount your root partition and delete the refined_linux.conf you created, reboot and it should be back to normal.
