cnnot install Xubuntu

[yancek]

What boot menu? Are you referring to the BIOS firmware Boot Options? Are you selecting the windows drive to boot windows, the ubuntu drive to boot ubuntu? When you look at the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file on Xubuntu, do you see a chainloader entry for windows? If so, post it here. If you don't have it, have you run sudo update-grub from Xubuntu since you got both systems running? If not, try it and watch the output to see if a windows entry shows.

[ajgreeny]

OK, you have run boot-repair and it got you nowhere, but you have not shown us the boot-info script output which we may find much more useful than your uncertsin descriptions of what you have on disk and what you have tried so far.

So, see Boot-Repair in my signature below and follow the instructions there to run the Boot-Info-Script.

Do not run the default repair or any other repair just yet but simply copy back here the pastebin link you get which will show us a lot more detain about your system.

[Autodave]

Pastebin: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/nrcz8V7MWx/

[Autodave]

bump

[yancek]

I asked 2 days ago if you had a windows chainloader entry in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and whether you had run sudo update-grub and you have not answered??

In your boot repair output, beginning at line 13 the contents of the nvme drive EFI partition shows both windows and linux EFI files inclding grub.cfg. This is where windows is installed, partition 3. Beginning at line 43, the contents of the sda drive EFI partition which shows only linux EFI files including grub.cfg, xubuntu on sda3

Beginning at line 88, the efibootmgr output shows 2 ubuntu entries but you have only one installed: Boot0003 ubuntu, Boot0005 ubuntu

Boot repair shows the below, that you are booting currently from Boot0003 so Boot0005 is an old, useless entry.
BootCurrent: 0003

On line 205, you see the contents of the grub.cfg file on the windows drive which is pointing to a UUID which does not exist which you can see by looking at the output of blkid beginning at line 175.

At line 211 of boot repair you see the contents of the grub.cfg file on sda1 which is the EFI partition on the ubuntu drive and point to sda2 with the correct UUID for that partition so that is what you are and should be using.

Have you tried running sudo update-grub while booted to the newly installed Xubuntu with both drives attached? Did you see any output for a windows entry? If you look at the grub.cfg file on the Xubuntu partition and see a chainloader entry for windows, check the UUID and see if it is: DD55-79EC If that is the entry, it is incorrect as the windows EFI files are on the partition with the UUID of: 7E94-CA99

If you want, you can open the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file on the system partition of your Xubuntu install as root (use sudo) and copy and paste the entry below there,save the file and reboot to see if you have that entry showing on boot and windows boots. If it does, make the change permanent by adding the entry to the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file. If this does not boot windows, report in detail exactly what you did and the results.

[Autodave]

Yancek: I thank you for your time and energy put into that reply and your previous one. I really do! But, I get a headache just trying to understand what I need to do. Maybe it is because I am 70 years old....dunno.

I did get into the BIOS and managed to get the machine to boot directly into Xubuntu, so since Xubuntu is my primary OS, I guess that at least for now, I will live with having to get into Win11 by going into the boot menu and picking it there.

Again, I greatly appreciate the time and effort that you put into your replies! Maybe some day in the future I will try to do what you suggested and report back. But again, I just think that it is, right now, not worth the effort and headache.

Thank you!!

[tea for one]

As you can boot into both systems via the PC boot menu, it would be a worthwhile to follow yancek's suggestion in post 15.
Boot into Xubuntu, open a terminal:-

sudo update-grub

Did Grub find the Windows Boot Manager?
Either everything stays the same or "GRUB straightened out" will transpire.

[yancek]

Most of the information in my post 15 is an explanation of why you should run sudo update-grub, you don't need to understand it. Try it and you will see one of the results indicated in post 17. You should be able to access the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and look through for a windows entry and if you have one, make sure the UUID is correct. I meant to post an entry in my earlier post but forgot it so the entry below should work as explained in my earlier post. You have 2 EFI partitions and it may have the wrong one but this is just a guess as we don't know the contents of the grub.cfg file.

menuentry 'Windows Boot Manager ' {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 7E94-CA99
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

Maybe it is because I am 70 years old

Ah,... to be 70 again.