I've been dualbooting Win 10 and Linux on the same disk without any issue for some 5 years. My suggestion is that you must first install Windows and then Linux; you also need to disable Windows' Fast boot mode, since it takes your disk hostage.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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I've dual booted every version of Windows since XP, often on the same drive. I've never had the bootloader get nuked. Windows 11 just installed a bunch of big updates without a problem. You'll probably be fine.
I've done the same and have the seen the bootloader get changed in a way that prevented one or the other from booting.
The risk is there.
No doubt. I can't just have had 20+ years of good luck though, right? I think the risk is relatively small.
What do you mean? Just swappes boot order in BIOS?
Dualbooting is fine if they are on separate drives. I've been dualbooting in this way for about a year with no major problems. As the other person said, be sure to remove the windows disk before installing Linux as it is possible to mess things up if both disks are attatched. The other annoyance is sometimes when windows updates it sets itself as the default in the boot order, but that's a quick fix.
I had my bootloader nuked when I dual boot with different drives. And that is when I nuked windows.
I think the only way to make sure is to completely disable windows update (as windows update sometimes also handles drivers uefi etc, not just windows), and that is known to be hard
The advice I got was the other way around, that you need to remove the Linux disk while installing Windows to protect the bootloader from the Windows installer.
Everything is fixable anyway, you just don't want it to break every time you turn the computer on.
I didn't remove the windows disk and Ubuntu just added an windows entry in the boot menu
At this point, Win 10 updates may not break much. It's a risk, but I would say worth it. Just back up everything.
Windows 11 is the one that goes out of its way to mess up a Linux dual boot.
yes it"s not gonna cause issues. even if it does its a very simple fix
This, 100%. It'll probably ruin your day but it won't ruin your life.
You don't need separate disks like people are saying. You can have two separate EFI System Partitions (ESP) on the same disk, the one Windows makes and one that you make for just Linux so Windows isn't ever messing with it.
I've run Windows 10 & Linux on the same disk through many Windows updates without issue.
And actually, if you're never going to update Windows, then there would be no reason you can't have them use the same ESP.
What loopy's saying. I find it easier to be like "Disk A: Linux, Disk B: Windows" and use separate EFI partitions, so I generally do that on computers where I can stuff two separate disks, but I have machines with only one hard drive, and then I just go "First half of disk: Windows, second half: Linux." I agree that install Windows then Linux is the way to go. True story: quadruple booted an old MacBook Pro: supported Mac OS, OCLP Mac OS, Windows 11, Ubuntu. Did it for a friend, spent forever getting it all to work, then he set it down in a coffee shop and walked away. Never saw it again.
No one will stop you. We are not the bootloader police.
I'm not an expert at this, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm running windows 11 and linux on separate drives at the moment with separate bootloaders on their respective disks and everything seems to be fine, but I'm not sure about how it interacts with potentially upgrading windows versions.
I'm pretty sure as long as windows keeps its own bootloader on its own drive then it shouldn't interfere with linux at all, as even if it did update without permission it would still use that bootloader. But as I said I've not had experience with windows updating entire versions.
If you've currently not installed windows, I would disconnect your drive containing linux first to ensure it doesn't try to share the boot partition on that one, as that's an issue I ran into when setting windows up. I had to wipe my linux drive after it messed up my backup snapshot stuff on linux because of that, and had to manually create a new partition on my windows drive and copy its boot files to resolve it, don't be like me.
I hope that helps a little, I'm sorry if it doesn't fully answer your question.
Make your life easier, use seperated drives. Windows will "auto repair" (translate to 'Wipe linux') sometimes. Also a lot of windows issues with the updater not liking that there is another OS available at boot. But it is functional when booted