Linux Mint Forums

I have a PC with dual boot Windows 7 and 10.
When Windows 7 support ends I'd like to dump Windows altogether as Windows 10 is an unmitigated disaster that is getting worse by the day.
Each of the OSes is installed on a separate M.2 NVMe SSD. They were installed with their boot drive as the only disk installed so I don't end up with a bootloader screen popping up each time I turn on my system. The PC boots Windows 10 by default, and if I want Windows 7 I press F11 to enter the BIOSs boot menu. This is my preferred way of doing it.

I have a Samsung 850 Pro 128gb in the PC not being used, and wanted to install Linux Mint on it. So I removed all other drives and started the install. Several steps in Mint popped up a warning that if I proceeded I would not be able to boot my other OSes. I want to be able to boot any of the three with F11 (and default to Windows 10).

The motherboard is an MSI X299 XPower gaming AC.

Windows 10 is on a Samsung 970 Evo 1TB
Windows 7 is on a Samsung 960 Evo 1TB.

Both of those drives also have other partitions created. The plan was to install Linux on the 128GB SSD then plug in all drives and have a triple boot system..

Is this possible without overwriting or breaking my existing configuration?

thank you.

YES - that is most definitely possible.


you simply install LinuxMint onto that proposed drive,,,
and make that drive, the 1st drive ( SDa ) and install the Linux Grub Boot Loader to that drive's boot sector.

the installer should pick up, the two other windows systems, & add them both to it's Boot Menu,
and as you have set this drive as the boot drive, then that will not affect the windows boot loader mechanism,,
as that boot loader will still be on the original drive, & that you no longer boot from.

I may be misunderstanding, but after reading your reply it doesn't sound like what I want.

I'm trying to get three separate drives with three different OSes only bootable by pressing F11 at boot time. If I don't press F11 it should boot into Windows 10. No OSes bootloader should list any other OSes.

Anyway, it would be rude of me not to try what you have suggested, so I will do that and report back.

Hi tanyac!

It sounds like what you want is to remove the two drives with windows installed, then install linux to the new ssd. When you finish that then go back into bios settings (F11 by the sounds of it) reenable the two windows drives and move the boot order to boot from the win10 drive (most likely it is listed in order top to bottom, menu depending). Then hit whatever key saves and exits your firmware menu. To boot to linux would be the same as you do now to change from win10 to win7. If UEFI then please wait for others to confirm as I know little of it and am very new to linux as well

Well, the warning isn't as ominous as it's worded.
I did indeed install Mint 19 with all other drives removed. Despite warning that doing so would break my bootability of other OSs it didn't. It did indeed set itself as the primary boot options, but as you said, it's just a matter of reconnecting all drives and reordering the boot sequences.

All is well.

thanks

excellent news! and thanks for checking back in. Please consider an edit to subject of initial post this thread to add: [Solved] to assist in searches for solutions to similar issues, thanks tanyac