dual boot arch linux : can't boot into arch after first reboot

Question

I'm using Lenovo ideaPad s940-14WL. I've installed arch along side windwos using the arch wiki guide but after I reboot the system for the first time it boots straight to windows and the grub boot entry is gone. I can't boot back to my arch installation, this also happend when I tried to dual boot with Manjaro and when I used a diffrent bootloader other than grub. I installed grub using the following line: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi/ --bootloader-id=GRUB

I have the following partitions:

dev/nvme0n1p1  - efi System for windows and arch 
dev/nvme0n1p2  - Microsoft reserved
dev/nvme0n1p3  - Microsoft basic data 
/dev/nvme0n1p4- windwos recovery environment
dev/nvme0n1p5 - linux swap 
dev/nvme0n1p6 - linux file system 

efibootmgr -v output:

BootCurrent: 0094
Timeout: 0 seconds 
BootOrder : 0094 , 0014 , 0017 , 0095 , 0097 , 0096 
Boot0010 Setup FvFile
Boot0011  Boot Menu 
Boot 0012 Diagnostic splash
Boot0013 Regulartory Information 
Boot014* USB FDD:
Boot0017 USB CD:
Boot0096* NVMe venMSg
Boot0098* USB HDD:
Boot0099* USB LAN:

I've also tried installing grub with the removable parameter using this command: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB --removable but when I use it , it does not even create a boot entry to begin with. Am I doing something wrong here?

thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

It's normal that no entry will be created with --removable, as that's exactly the point of it -- rely on a "portable" path instead of a registration of a "custom" path for the EFI executable to use.

If it still doesn't work (well), it's probably due to the fact that some / many UEFI firmware will (re-)prioritize Windows Boot Manager (/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi) under certain circumstances / all the time.

In that case you might want to use /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi for Windows Boot Manager and /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi for grub. It will requires you to write a custom grub entry / grub.cfg (which is actually easy and should be done by everyone IMO), and it still won't work really well (as Windows will overwrite the "now-really-grub" from time to time), but you'll have to make do with poor UEFI firmware I guess.

Answer 2

You might also consider booting without a bootloader. If you drop into the UEFI shell, you can boot from a one line script (startup.nsh). Or you can invoke your grub efi from the shell.

To use the UEFI Shell, look at the Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Obtaining_UEFI_Shell