How to save Linux installations while reinstalling Windows 10 on multiboot desktop.
by mgerson from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5NK85)
I am posting this here, in the Linux-General forum, because I couldn't find another logical forum for it, but would be happy to re-post elsewhere if advised to do so.
The Windows 10 installation on my multi-boot computer is broken - won't boot - and I think I need to re-install it. There are also five Linux distros, so I guess it's a sextuple boot". One of the Linux distros is Manjaro KDE, on which have been doing 95% of my daily computer activity for 2 or 3 year and have "tweaked" just the way I like it. It's working fine and I want to save that set-up. (I don't care so much about the other four Linux installations, which are either old ones that I used years ago or new ones that I have installed to try out, but haven't really moved into" yet.
When I select Windows from the grub, or if I try boot it from the UEFI bios, I get a blue-screen saying:
"Recovery (large font)
Your PC/Device need to be repaired
The applicatioin or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \windows\system32\winload.efi
Error code: 0xc0000225
You'll need to use recovery tools. If you don't have any installation media ..." (etc. etc.)
I do have a recovery USB thumb-drive that I made when the computer was quite new. I have rebooted into that thumb-drive. It offers lots of options and sub-options: Troubleshoot, Reset this PC, Recover from a drive, Advance options, System Restore, System Image Recovery, Startup Repair, Command Prompt (at which I gave various commands that I found on advice sites - to no avail), Go back to the previous build. I have tried all the options but one, and all have failed to fix the problem. The option that I haven't tried is Reset this PC" because it threatened to remove any partitions that had been added to the main drive and return the drive to its original state, and that would mean losing all my Linux installations. I'm not particularly worried about my data - that is all stored on other ntfs-formatted drives or partitions so that it can be accessed from Windows or any of the Linux installations. But I want to avoid having to reinstall Manjaro and all the software I use, and particularly having to configure everything all over again from scratch.
So my question is, "how can I re-install Windows without losing all the Linux installations and configurations?"
I thought of a plan, but don't know whether it will work or whether there is a better alternative.
The computer has five drives running all the time that it's on. Sda is the 2Tb HDD that the computer came with. It now contains only one NTFS partition which contains most of the day-to-day data and which can be accessed from Windows or any of the Linux installations. Sdb is a 1Tb SSD that I installed a couple of years ago, which contains all the operating systems, starting with Windows. These are both internal drives, in the computer box. The other three are external HDDs connected by USB and either contain music files, video files, photo files, or other such data on NTFS partitions, or other expired" backups that I could delete. There is a certain amount of available space on these drives.
So my thought was to make clones" of the sbd-drive Linux partitions onto available space on the external HDDs (using my Gparted-Live CD), run the Windows re-set (which will presumably destroy all the other partitions on the sdb drive, as it is treatening to), shrink the Windows partition back down to the 150GB size it has been, happily, for the past five years or so, and then re-clone all the Linux partitions back to their original locations on the sbd-drive.
Should that work? If so, what do I need to be careful about when doing that? Or is there a better course of action that I should take?
Thanks for any advice anyone can give. If you need any more information about my system or situation, I'm happy to give it. Just tell me what you need to know.
The Windows 10 installation on my multi-boot computer is broken - won't boot - and I think I need to re-install it. There are also five Linux distros, so I guess it's a sextuple boot". One of the Linux distros is Manjaro KDE, on which have been doing 95% of my daily computer activity for 2 or 3 year and have "tweaked" just the way I like it. It's working fine and I want to save that set-up. (I don't care so much about the other four Linux installations, which are either old ones that I used years ago or new ones that I have installed to try out, but haven't really moved into" yet.
When I select Windows from the grub, or if I try boot it from the UEFI bios, I get a blue-screen saying:
"Recovery (large font)
Your PC/Device need to be repaired
The applicatioin or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \windows\system32\winload.efi
Error code: 0xc0000225
You'll need to use recovery tools. If you don't have any installation media ..." (etc. etc.)
I do have a recovery USB thumb-drive that I made when the computer was quite new. I have rebooted into that thumb-drive. It offers lots of options and sub-options: Troubleshoot, Reset this PC, Recover from a drive, Advance options, System Restore, System Image Recovery, Startup Repair, Command Prompt (at which I gave various commands that I found on advice sites - to no avail), Go back to the previous build. I have tried all the options but one, and all have failed to fix the problem. The option that I haven't tried is Reset this PC" because it threatened to remove any partitions that had been added to the main drive and return the drive to its original state, and that would mean losing all my Linux installations. I'm not particularly worried about my data - that is all stored on other ntfs-formatted drives or partitions so that it can be accessed from Windows or any of the Linux installations. But I want to avoid having to reinstall Manjaro and all the software I use, and particularly having to configure everything all over again from scratch.
So my question is, "how can I re-install Windows without losing all the Linux installations and configurations?"
I thought of a plan, but don't know whether it will work or whether there is a better alternative.
The computer has five drives running all the time that it's on. Sda is the 2Tb HDD that the computer came with. It now contains only one NTFS partition which contains most of the day-to-day data and which can be accessed from Windows or any of the Linux installations. Sdb is a 1Tb SSD that I installed a couple of years ago, which contains all the operating systems, starting with Windows. These are both internal drives, in the computer box. The other three are external HDDs connected by USB and either contain music files, video files, photo files, or other such data on NTFS partitions, or other expired" backups that I could delete. There is a certain amount of available space on these drives.
So my thought was to make clones" of the sbd-drive Linux partitions onto available space on the external HDDs (using my Gparted-Live CD), run the Windows re-set (which will presumably destroy all the other partitions on the sdb drive, as it is treatening to), shrink the Windows partition back down to the 150GB size it has been, happily, for the past five years or so, and then re-clone all the Linux partitions back to their original locations on the sbd-drive.
Should that work? If so, what do I need to be careful about when doing that? Or is there a better course of action that I should take?
Thanks for any advice anyone can give. If you need any more information about my system or situation, I'm happy to give it. Just tell me what you need to know.