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xbroutin
Contributor
Contributor

EFI FIRMWARE BOOT ORDER ISSUE

Hi

I'm trying to reproduce physical machine with two hard drives, one with Win10 the other with linux and dual boot

everything is ok dual boot works but when I set efi firmware boot order, everytime I boot on windows workstation is adding entries automatically to boot order and breaks it

I tried to deactivate it, remove it but still coming back and when VM is booting on Ubuntu entry if I select windows it say it can't find path of OS

but if I force to boot on (NSID 2) then it works.... Why is workstation adding those entries, how to remove it permenently? thanks

see picture in attachment

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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I'll start off by pointing out that we do not officially support dual-boot configurations inside a virtual machine.  It can be made to work, but it requires great care (just like on a physical machine) and our support folks would probably not want to help you solve problems with it...  The official recommendation is to put your two OSes into separate virtual machines.

But, you have described why you're doing this, and it should work, so let's continue... Smiley Wink

I am having trouble understanding the failure you are describing.  Can you help me by explaining in a bit more detail?

The EFI VMware Virtual NVME Namespace (NSID #) entries are added automatically by the VMware virtual EFI firmware; We add those to help with some faulty OS EFI implementations which do not add their own boot order entries, and also to aid in recovering systems to a bootable state if the boot order is cleared, such as if they lose their nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM, stored in the .nvram file in with the rest of the virtual machine's files on the host).  Any entries we add will always be placed at the end of the boot order list.

The Windows Boot Manager entry was added by Windows Setup.

The ubuntu entry was added by the Ubuntu installer using efibootmgr.

We do not modify the Windows Boot Manager and ubuntu entries after they are configured by the OS.

The entries we add at the end of the boot order list should not be able to cause other bootloaders to misbehave... that would be strange, and would probably involve a bug in the bootloader.

It would help if you describe the outcome of choosing each of those boot order entries, and the exact steps you are taking in order to force the OSes to boot correctly.

Thanks!

--

Darius

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xbroutin
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

thanks for your answer, unfortunatly I have to deal with the technology that the university I'm working for is using.

they don't want to invest in having dedicated labs for Linux so dual boot it is. Due to space problem we chose to separate Windows and linux on different disks, it's more convenient when we have to push new OS images trough SCCM we don't have to format Linux partition

actually on physical machines we are in legacy mode with bios and everything is working fine, I set boot order with Linux HardDrive first and that's it

eventually we are moving to UEFI and GPT so I'm doings some tests and thought Workstation would be a good solution instead of having to reinstall both OS in the case I'm doing wrong

I Thought I could proceed the same way as in lecacy, I installed windows in a VM, Linux in anothe VM then I imported Linux Vritual Dive in Windows VM, boot on Linux CD do a Boot-repair, set efi firmware boot order and voilà....

not that simple after all the boot order change by itself menu entries are showing up, when I force to boot on linux drive it works but when I let the system boot by itself, on linux grub menu says it doesn't find windows efi partition and on windows efi boot order "windows manager" place itself on top of boot order and at restart it launch automatically windows without showing grub menu..

At the begining I thought the problem was VMWARE Workstation virtual efi firmware because I don't know well EFI mechanisme but since yesterday I investigated and I found that in fact EFI Firmware inport the configuration of my both efi partitions on Linux and Windows .

at this point I think my problem comes from the way Boot-repair set my efi partitions, VMWARE Workstation is not involved, I'm going to investigate further on efi mechanism, I have some difficult to understand what files are needed to boot on windows or on linux

we can close this thread

regards

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

I Thought I could proceed the same way as in lecacy, I installed windows in a VM, Linux in anothe VM then I imported Linux Vritual Dive in Windows VM, boot on Linux CD do a Boot-repair, set efi firmware boot order and voilà....

The easier way to do is is to skip the Linux Boot-repair disk.

Create a VM with Windows.

Shut it down.

Add a virtual disk to your VM.

Install Linux to that disk.

Most modern linux version (such as ubuntu) will take care of the necessary boot entries.

That should be it.

You can even have a VM with 2 disks from the start if you like.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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xbroutin
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

yes that's what I'm doing because my problem comes from the fact I have two efi partitions and OS are creating menu entries in efi... I hate efi mechanism..

anyway I won't have choice to use physical machine for my tests because I just figured out in addition Microsoft doen't support Bitlocker for primary disk in a virtual disk... but thanks for your help

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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

BitLocker has been verified to work for a primary/boot disk in a VMware VM after a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) device is added​ to the virtual machine's configuration.  Note that this will enable encryption for your VM.

--

Darius

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xbroutin
Contributor
Contributor

yes you right for bitlocker it works, unfortunatly there is a problem with VMWARE WORKSTATION

I managed to get dual boot working with windows and linux in dual boot but every time i start the VM I get grub prompt it I type exit I get grub gui menu but if I select windows VM crash

if I ask VMWare to start the vm on firmware then select ubuntu menu in firmware i get gui menu and windows option works

I don't have this problem on physical machine, I did the test and I don't have grub prompt everything works fine I just get grub graphic menu and both linux and windows start

so I don't know why WORKSTATION in automatic mode, when I clic start on the VM is not doing the same thing as booting on firmware then selecting normal boot. there is definitly a difference in the way WORKSTATION proceed and I don't know why... if someone can enlight me on this.... would be nice

for bitlocker, no way to get it works with efi and dualboot... even on a physical machine, even if I set everything, windows and linux in efi gpt, having just one efi partition, everything working... as soon as I encrypt windows C: at reboot I get windows asking for recuperation key... it's a deal breaker.. the only possibility would be having students pressing F12 to get bios menu then select the OS and it's not an option because I wouldn't be able to restart machines on the os i need from remote and i cannot imagine having to restart every computer manually to select OS... Cheers Microft for monopoly abuse again

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