secure boot eufi windows 10 and leap 15, building new pc

I am building a new PC. ( Ryzen 5 cpu, asrock mobo, msi Radeon RX 570, 16 gig ram, a gaming pc on a budget :slight_smile: )

What I want is dual boot windows 10 and openSUSE Leap 15, for this there are two hard disk, one for windows one for Linux.
Windows 10 is already installed.

Main os will be Linux, and windows 10 for some (older) games that don’t have a Linux version.

I had already started and installed win 10, but he vid card I wanted to use, did not survive taking it out the old pc and putting it in the new pc.

**** happens so I ordered the RX 570.

Last time I looked in the bios it was not set to secure boot I think, as far as I understand things, because some hardware did not support that. ( old vid card)

Questions.
Can I just turn on secure boot in the bios, or will I have to reinstall win 10 ?
Do I need secure boot / eufi, is it better ?

The pc I am typing this with is also build by me, dual boot win 7 and leap 42.3, but it uses grub, I am new to secure boot and eufi.

Watched some vids of dual booting win 10 and suse, but there are doing it on a virtual machine, and it did not answer any of my questions / doubts.

If all goes well, will I get a uefi screen instead of a grub screen, were I can choose which os I want to start ?
While going through the bios ( eufi ? ) , I think I saw a box about a second os ?

Already have two usb sticks ready, one is win 10 , and one openSUSE leap 15.

So how to proceed?

Enable secure boot, put in Linux usb, and reboot ? or is it not that easy ? :slight_smile:

To answer the first question, if you installed W10 under EFI boot (not Legacy), you’ll be fine. You can also check/test it by just enabling the secure boot and UEFI. W10 by defaults supports secure boot, if installed in UEFI.

At worst, you can change the BIOS settings if things don’t work. Reinstall if necessary but when you (RE)make the bootable W10 be sure that is EFI ready (you have this option if you use Rufus). Also, many default OpenSUSE kernels are secure boot compatible, and there is a bit of a messy way to secure it if it isn’t.

As for whether Legacy v.s. UEFI I will let others to answer but I remember it was a question between GPT v.s. MBR which has to do with storage limit.
-SJL

If Windows is currently booting with UEFI, then you can just turn on secure-boot.

If Windows is currently using legacy MBR booting, then I suggest staying with that. There are web pages on switching to UEFI booting, but a reinstall is probably the most reliable way. But,as the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.

Thank you guys, I also tried a new google search, left linux out of it and only used win 10.

It seem turning it on and off should not be an issue. (secure boot)

Now will have to find out, if new pc is booting using a mbr or eufi to make sure.
Should be able to find this in the bios. :slight_smile:

Been a few weeks since I did that windows install, was about to put in the suse usb, when I found out vid card was dead.
Then tried allot of things , like updating the bios.

So right now no idea if eufi is enabled.

if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it

But I am also on a dutch site, called Tweakers, it used to say:
If it ain’t broke, tweak it.

All kidding aside, I do agree, but I have not used windows yet, only installed it so won’t loose anything but time with new install.
Time I would prefer to spend on installing suse though. :wink:

For Windows:
legacy BIOS <-> MBR
UEFI <-> GPT

For Linux:
you can choose what you want.

“Secure boot” - this is for secure purposes.
Ryzen cpu - working good with a UEFI.
You can use UEFI without “secure boot”.

Grub supports UEFI booting.

So how to proceed?

Try to install OSes.

Update:

After putting in the vid card and connecting both hard disk, I tried to boot windows.

It complained as usual and it seems I ended up with windows reinstalling.

After this I downloaded and installed thunderbird ( for windows) .

Then put leap usb stick into pc, and rebooted, ( had to go into bios to set usb as first boot device)

Default proposal wanted to change the windows 10 hard disk, and was ignoring a completely new not used, empty hard-disk. (you gotta love computers)

Choosing expert options, I managed to have leap use the second hard disk. Used brtfs ( hope I am not gonna regret this) and picked a separate partion for home.

Installed thunderbird on Linux too.

This almost went perfectly.
I can trough the bios, boot leap or Win10 but win 10 is not showing as an option, on the leap boot screen.

It only show leap twice (as normal) , and something I have not seen before, about starting from a flash drive ?

It does not show win 10 though.

When I looked in yast, under boot.
Probe foreign os is checked.

I then left yast by saving settings, but still no win 10 in the leap boot screen.

I am lost, Did I miss the option probe foreign os during install, or was it just not there ?

Typing this from old pc. :frowning:

Hi
If you run the following commands (as root user);


os-prober
efibootmgr -v

What is the output?

Bit off topic complaining:

Tomorrow will see if I can buy a hdmi or display port to vga cable.
I have an old flatpannel monitor with only a VGA connection with a few dead pixels, but it perfect to connect temporary to the new pc to set thing up.
The RX570 off course does not have vga anymore. It has Display port, HDMI and DL-DVI_D

Right now have to take monitor from old pc to new pc, Did it twice already, not gonna do it again.

Way to much work with risk of dropping monitor, and totally not handy when I want to just copy my Thunderbird profile and some other stuff over from older to new pc.
Or type a command…

:wink:

Hi
You might need a convertor (HDMI to VGA Adapter Converter) not a cable… :wink: I use a couple here, work fine.

Did you turn fastboot off in Windows??? If on (the default) Windows file systems are left in a suspended state and thus more or less invisible to other OS.

Found one 3,50 euro. HDMI to VGA, it has a small cable between the two connectors, and it says on the box it converts the signal.

Just a cable wont work you’re right about that :slight_smile:

Hi
That sounds like the right thing :wink:

I will have a look, I don’t have a clue on how windows is installed.

Eufi yes no ?

If I understand my motherboard bios right though, its eufi or eufi with legacy support.

This is one reason why I like Linux allot more. Sure things can go wrong, but the installer is for me so much better clearer.

Later tonight or tomorrow gonna type that command and maybe google on how I can tell how windows is installed mbr or eufi :slight_smile:

Edit:
found this: Check if Computer Uses UEFI or Legacy BIOS [Linux & Windows]

Maybe its easiest to use leap for this and look how sda is formatted.

I first thought it was just a typo, but you are consistent in typing “eufi”. It is “UEFI” (or “uefi” when you like that more).

Thank you, will pay more attention to it.

No output at all.

Also tried this command on the old pc, to see if I was typing it right, and there I get /dev/sdb1: windows 7 chain (os prober)

Will try again later taking a break for now, tried to find out in windows 10 if it uefi or not, and windows was as usual totally getting on my nerves.
Windows search for mbr and uefi, gives nothing)

Also looked in the bios.

First boot option = leap secure boot.

Some good news (bit off topic) , I am totally happy I bought on purpose two different brand hard disk.
When I first build the pc I am typing this on, I bought two identical samsung hard disk.

Because this makes it hard to see in the bios, which disk is which, new pc has two different brand but same size disks. ( 1 terra byte each )
Now the windows hard disk even starts with a W ( western digital) rotfl!

So will try again later and report back.

efibootmgr -v

to be continued…

guus@linux-yabx:~> sudo efibootmgr -v
[sudo] wachtwoord voor root: 
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0005
Boot0000* opensuse-secureboot   HD(1,GPT,3afadf05-3341-438e-92be-5cfad57c26f5,0x800,0xfa000)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\SHIM.EFI)
Boot0001* Hard Drive    BBS(HD,,0x0)..GO..NO........u.W.D.C. .W.D.1.0.E.Z.E.X.-.0.8.W.N.4.A.0....................A.................................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . .W. .-.D.C.W.6.C.2.Y.R.T.3.1.6.F........BO..NO........u.S.T.1.0.0.0.D.M.0.1.0.-.2.E.P.1.0.2....................A.................................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . . . . . . . . . .N.Z.0.1.9.W.H.5........BO
Boot0005* opensuse      HD(1,GPT,3afadf05-3341-438e-92be-5cfad57c26f5,0x800,0xfa000)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO
guus@linux-yabx:~> 

I think wdc is the wndows disk ?

used usb stick to copy the info from new pc :slight_smile:

Hi
So no output from os-prober, I would manually add the windows entry back…

So windows is on a second disk? Can you show the output from the lsblk command.

guus@linux-yabx:~> lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931,5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   579M  0 part 
└─sda2   8:2    0   931G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   0 931,5G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   500M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sdb2   8:18   0 319,7G  0 part /root
├─sdb3   8:19   0 609,4G  0 part /home
└─sdb4   8:20   0     2G  0 part [SWAP]

Do I understand this right, that windows is not using uefi ? Because then the windows disk should have a 500M efi partion too ?

Hi
Not necessarily, it’s set to gtp rather than dos. Run the command fdisk -l /dev/sda

If you ls the /boot/efi/EFI directory, what directories are present?