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I have a VM with two virtual disks. Each have windows OS (w10 and upgraded, same W10 to W11). I cannot separate them to 2 VMs, because I'll loose the activation on one of them. I have enabled boot menu in virt-manager. I do not get a boot menu selection to choose OS at boot (as in grub). Is there a way to have a grub like boot selection menu.

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  • With OVMF firmware, enabling the boot menu is not enough. You have to press ESC at the prompt. Which firmware (BIOS/UEFI) are you using?
    – Daniel B
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 11:56
  • I use OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd. ESC just take me to the BIOS setup menu. I need to be able to go to the OS selection menu or grub menu
    – user63726
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 17:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Even if you pass -boot menu=on to QEMU (which is what libvirt does for you), this option is not implemented by QEMU but rather by the firmware (typically SeaBIOS or OVMF). You have OVMF. In OVMF, enabling it results in a 3-second delay for you to access the firmware menu by pressing ESC.

OVMF boot delay

From the screen that comes up you can select Boot Manager and then select the desired boot option.

If you feel this is too clunky, you can also add Windows 10 to the Windows 11 boot menu. It might also work the other way around, but I wouldn’t count on it. The easiest way to do this is EasyBCD. Or, if you’re comfortable with the command line, you can also use bcdedit directly.

You’ll also want to switch the bootmenupolicy to legacy. Because otherwise Windows fully boots before presenting the boot menu. If you select something else, it’ll shut down and reboot. A tremendous waste of time.

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