14 DAY TRIAL // A user who was dual-booting Xubuntu and Windows 8 has reported that one of the latest updates for Windows 8 has actually deleted the GRUB and switched UEFI to secure boot.
Linux users are not strangers to the problems caused by dual-booting. It’s a well-known fact that if you install Windows on a PC or laptop that already has a Linux operating system it will delete the boot loader. It can be fixed easily, but the GRUB, for example, recognizes Windows operating systems and integrates them so that the user is not affected.
A Linux and Windows 8 user has reported on Reddit that one of the updates performed by Microsoft's operating system deleted the GRUB boot loader and set UEFI to secure boot. Moreover, after he restored GRUB2 (which is done pretty easily, as illustrated in our tutorial) now there are three entries besides the Linux one.
“Went through a W8 update. After it was done doing that, grub2 had been removed, and UEFI booting had been set to ‘secure boot’ -which it wasn't prior to the update. Note: it was not the infamous W8->W8.1 update. Also, during the update, W8 mentioned ‘there is a security problem with your computer’ that needed to be ‘fixed.’ At no point could I intervene, true to MS form,” said the user on Reddit.
According to him, this happened on a Lenovo Ideapad Flex while dual-booting Windows 8 and Xubuntu 13.10. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to pinpoint which update was to blame. Also, another user in the same thread said that he faced a similar problem when dual-booting Windows 8.1 with Fedora 20 and Ubuntu 13.10.
One of the other interesting things the user noted was that he called Microsoft support, but they denied that one of the updates was to blame. He also said that the Microsoft support representative also made the following statement: “MS updates makes sure W8 functions fine, it does not look at other OS's integrity.”
It's difficult to ascertain the veracity of these claims, but it wouldn't be that far-fetched for an update to actually do all those things. It's also possible that the new build just triggered a system check that found a problem and tried to fix it by replacing the boot loader with the “original” one.
If you’ve had a similar problem with dual-booting Windows and Linux, please make sure to leave a comment below.