Grub on dual boot Win11 and Ubuntu prevents Windows 11 feature update

Question

I've been running Ubuntu for some time on my Dell XPS 17, in dual boot with Windows 11 and haven't really thought about any issues, it's been working fine.

We have a corporate policy that it's Mac or Windows as developer and we are also "security certified" which means our laptops are checked for updates, firewalls etc. and have to be up-to-date.

I need to get 22H2 installed, but I've ended up in an infinite loop... "Normal" Windows updates have been installing just fine, but the Feature update isn't working.

It installs the update and restarts (to grub) and if I choose to boot to Windows it continues to install update and then restarts again, again I choose to boot to Windows but then it rolls back the update...

Back in Windows I get the nag-screen that I must update to 22H2 and it starts installing it again...

I assume it's Grub that is interfering with the update somehow.

I've tried to set Windows as the "default" boot option for Grub, but that doesn't make any difference...

I'm on a Dell XPS 17, so in BIOS there's an option to remove the Ubuntu boot option and boot to Windows directly, which does boot to Windows but with the same behavior, it rolls back the update, restarts and then the Grub boot selection is back again.

Any pointers on how to solve this?

I've Googled a lot and seems most are recommending to run Ubuntu and Windows 11 on separate harddrives but I've set it up on separate partitions only... Starting over with one or the other OS would suck, but I'd have to keep Windows because of the policies...

Answer 1

Ok, for anyone finding their way here I figured that I'll update the answer, and, yes, it has nothing to do with Grub!

Using the Grub bootloader works just fine, except you must be in front of the laptop to choose to load Windows between the restarts! If the laptop boots to Ubuntu in between restarts the feature update for Windows is rolled back!

So, I tested a ton of different approaches I found while Googling:

• I ran the Update Troubleshooter; it said it found an issue which it fixed
• I've updated all drivers and BIOS on my laptop (Dell XPS 17) and all devices are working "normally" and no device shows as "unknown" or similar
• I've cleaned out the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution directory
• I've cleaned out the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and the "catroot2" directories

There is no errors in Event viewer, nor is any error code shown anywhere during the update (that I can see).

I've also installed and run WindowsPCHealthCheckSetup and then tried the Windows11InstallationAssistant to get the update installed, but still the exact same behavior.

None of the above helped...

Then I finally found SetupDiag which I downloaded and ran. The logs ended up under Temporary files for me so it took a while to find them, but you can set the output using the parameter as SetupDiag /Output:"C:\Tools\SetupDiag\SetupDiag Results\Results.log"

In the SetupDiagResults.log there was a clear pointer to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\logitechble.inf_amd64_f17c28488c4e7f78\logitechble.inf causing an issue.

Clearly some Logitech driver, so I uninstalled all Logitech software, but the driver remained, so I run an uninstall of the .inf file manually. To do that, open a CMD as Admin, and CD to the .inf directory, and then execute:

pnputil /delete-driver <example.inf> /uninstall

Then I re-ran the update, and now 22H2 is installed successfully!

Answer 2

Following the advice from @ChanganAuto above in the comments, I've dug through the BIOS settings and also tried to understand a bit about the boot process...

On my Dell XPS 17, there's a possibility to alter the boot between Windows and Ubuntu very easily:

I deselected Ubuntu as an option and moved it down the list, rebooted and (as expected) Windows loads without any question about loading Ubuntu.

It's a bit cumbersome to test as it can take an hour or two before Windows realizes that the Feature update should be installed, but after about an hour I got it installed and the laptop rebooted. It boots directly to Windows again, installs update, restarts but rolls back the update...

Following the idea from @harrymc, I enabled Fast Startup in Windows and tried one more time, but unfortunately the same happens, a rollback after the third restart.

So, I can then conclude that the answer to my question, as @ChanganAuto pointed out, has nothing to do with Grub per say.

However, my colleague, with the exact same setup, can't install the Feature updates either. He's been on Ubuntu dual-boot far longer than I and he's too stuck on 21H2... Now we "only" need to figure out why the 22H2 feature update keeps failing on our laptops...

I am also happy to understand that reinstalling everything with two separate harddrives won't change how things work, really, so I am glad for that information that saved me a lot of (unnecessary) work!