I installed Zorin OS 17 alongside Windows 11 and when rebooting my PC the typical dual boot screen did not appear. So I went into the BIOS/UEFI Firmware settings and I could not find any disc that contains Zorin OS (I tired this multiple times, it never showed up). I even placed the Windows boot option as the last one, but still every time Windows boots up.
On my Windows I do have WSL Ubuntu installed, could this maybe interfere? And for some reason if I enter the advanced options in Windows (Restarting while holding shift) and select install from drive (even though there is no USB/disc in my PC) Ubuntu appears as an option. If I click on that Zorin OS boots and not Ubuntu. Here I also get the option to cose which OS I want to use.
I tried installing grub on Zorin OS but that did nothing (i think).
What do I have to do to dual boot Zoris OS correctly and not always have to boot Windows first to reboot into Zorin?
I had the same issue on my older acer laptop: Zorin (and every other linux distribution) didn't add a boot entry to the bios for some unknown reason
So this is what I did:
Enable "Secure Boot" inside the bios, just so a few more options become available (assuming it was disabled. If it was already enabled, keep it like that)
Select "Add EFI file as trusted". From there, I get some kind of filesystem to navigate through. I don't remember exactly how it looked like, but if i remember right, the first folders that appear are the partitions of the drive. Choose the one that represents the EFI partition (I think the name of the directory itself is literally called EFI, so shouldn't be hard to find), then go to the folder named ubuntu, and somewhere inside of it should be a file named something like "grub64.efi" or something like that. I'm not sure of the exact name, but, as far as I recall, it should be the only file that has "grub" in the name and has the ".efi" file extension. Then I select that, write anything that makes it easy to identify when it asks to give it a name (you can name it "zorin", or "ubuntu" if you are planning to try out other ubuntu-based distributions, you can even name it "very awesome linux" and it will work)
Make sure that, on the boot order, the entry with the name you typed before is above the "Windows Boot Manager" entry, so the computer tries to run that instead of going straight to windows
Save and exit from the bios. Now a menu should appear that asks if you want to use Zorin or Windows. That should be enough in most cases, but if Zorin refuses to boot when selecting it from that menu, do this:
Click on here and follow these steps only in the case of the menu for choosing Zorin or Windows appearing, but Zorin doesn't start
Boot the Zorin Live USB
Select "Try Zorin"
Open the file explorer and try to access the windows partition from it
If it asks for a password, boot back into windows and follow ALL of the next steps. If it doesn't ask for a password and shows all the windows files, skip the step number 6.
Backup any important data, just in case
Open the control panel (the old one, not the new main settings app) and disable drive encryption. As far as I recall, it shouldn't ask for a password other than the one from your Windows user account (if you use a password there, that is). But if instead of password, it specifically asks for a recovery key, it should be located on your microsoft account's website
Then go to the bios and disable Secure Boot
Try to boot Zorin. It should work now, but feel free to come back here and let us know if it doesn't. Then boot into windows to make sure everything is okay with Secure Boot disabled (the reason we disabled drive encryption in step 6 is because windows would panic and refuse to boot with drive encryption enabled and secure boot disabled. Sure, it's not a BSOD, it just asks for the recovery key, which can be looked up from the web browser on your phone, but disabling drive encryption would make this easier AND allow you to access your windows files from inside linux, making workflow more convenient and recovery easier in the case of a broken windows)
just like in the video. I downloaded the ISO and used Rufus to flash to USB. I selected GPT. Zorin is still not showing up in my BIOS though... and when I boot my pc Windows starts automatically. i've noticed that rEFInd is now availiable when I select "boot from device", can I somehow use this to solve my problem?
You wrote that You used GPT when you created a USB stick with Rufus. Does Your BIOS is in UEFI Mode? Or in Legacy? Because when it would be in Legacy, You need to use MBR instead of GPT.
its in UEFI Mode. This is really frustrating because I really dont know what I am doing wrong I've Installed Zorin multiple times in pretty much every way I can think of and it is still not in my BIOS.
Could my Main Board have something to do with it? I have a Main board from MSI. Or is my BIOS not up to date? I really don't know anymore at this point
disk 0 contains everything related to Windows and disk 1 is for Zorin
(I wiped the whole disk before installing Zorin -> color was black = unallocated)
Okay, thank you for the Picture. You have 2 EFI Partitions. Maybe this makes Problems. Did You have chosen for Installation the ''Something else'' Option?
If Yes, did You created 2 Partions: / and /boot/efi/ ?
For Dual-Boot, it would be easier to chose the ''Install Zorin alongside Windows'' Option but You wrote that You have done this. When you use the Something else Option, you should find at the Bottom of the Partition Overview a Point called ''Device for boot loader installation''. Click there on the Dropdown Menu and choose for ''Windows Boot Manager'':
Then the Boot Stuff lands in the existing Windows EFI Partition. And for the free Space that you have made simply use the / Mounting Point and format it to ext4.
I've Installed Zorin multiple times in pretty much every way I can think of and it is still not in my BIOS.
