Windows 10 won't boot after dual boot installation - Optane volume

Solution 1:

Problem Source:

My laptop comes with 2 SSD. One of 500GB and the other of 28GB. The disks were setup with Intel's Optane technology which meant all the files were getting distributed between the 2 disks for optimization. I believe that this particular setup was causing the EFI partition to get corrupted during Ubuntu's installation deleting the windload.efi file and rendering impossible to boot to windows.

Solution Step-by-Step:

There are a couple steps in solving the issue. The first thing I personally needed was to get a recovery Disk from HP and made a clean installation of Windows 10. Once you have access to windows 10 proceede to take the following steps:

1. Disable secure boot in BIOS (if applicable).

2. Download Intel® Optane™ Memory User Interface app.

3. Disable Optane volume from Intel's Memory User Interface app.

4. Disable Optane volume from BIOS (if still required, check requirements for your PC model, mine is an HP Spectre x360).

5. De-allocate memory for your Ubuntu installation (free space in your main disk from windows' Disk Utility).

6. Download Rufus and the Ubuntu image you want to install.

7. Mount your Ubuntu iso file into a flash drive using Rufus (make sure the partition table format is compatible with the one your drive uses, mine was using GPT.)

8. Change the boot order in the BIOS to boot on the USB or just boot from the USB (check how to do so in your computer model)

9. Select install Ubuntu from the GRUB (black screen with white letters)

10. Select "Install along windows"

Lessons learned:

• Always back up your data.
• If you're doing dual boot make sure you have system recovery images for everything, windows, Ubuntu, grub.
• Back up your UEFI partition before starting.
• Even if you've done it a 100 times and are a super expert, review first and do some research you may encounter some challenges as new versions keep coming up.

Resources

• HP Documentation for Optane disks
• De-allocate memory for Ubuntu using windows' Disk Utility
• Rufus website