TL;DR: bitlocker does not like grub
Full story:
Months ago I installed fedora on my desktop, dual booting Windows 11.
In all this time I never had the need to boot into windows. I remembered that it worked fine after install, good, and then I forgot about that.
Today I needed a specific windows only software, so at grub I chose the microsoft bootloader and… BITLOCKER.
Huh? Bitlocker? Me? What? Searched frantically for that decryption password in my keepass, did not find. What?? How???
After a few minutes staring at that screen I thought, ok let’s just wipe that shit and reclaim the space. I went back to linux, opened the partition manager, then remembered that i had something important in single copy over there. Noooooo
Went back to the boot screen to try again, still failed password.
Then I notice the error:
e_fve_pcr_mismatch
that mismatch lets me think that maybe I had something wrong in my booting.
I try to put windows first in the bios and it works! WHAT THE…???
So, if i put linux first, then launch windows from grub, bitlocker takes the windows partition under ransom, i can only access if windows is first. And of course in windows 11 x64 is no longer possible add linux partitions in their boot manager (previously it was possible)
Incompetence or maliciousness?
I have given up dual-booting and just have a Windows VM for work things that require Windows. Less muss, less fuss and I can move the VM around as needed when moving between primary PCs.
I would like to go this route, but I’m really confused about how to do it legally, or even in a gray area sense. I once purchased a Windows 10 Pro license. I’m not sure if that entitles me to being able to install Windows in a VM, but I would really like to do this to run some Windows-only applications that don’t seem to work in WINE
Yeah, that’s basically it. Buy a license and apply it when you install windows from the windows ISO installer on the VM.
If you’ve already used the license on a PC, you may need a new one or you might be able to transfer it if it’s a retail version, not an OEM version.
did you have to buy a windows license to do it?
You don’t have to
If you only need it for 90 days before it expires, Microsoft will give you the VM for free (and if you’re particularly industrious, you might write a script that then installs a load of your shit for you to run after you fire up a fresh one)
If you don’t care about potentially breaking the law you can run it forever with a couple of scripts you can find on GitHub
If you don’t want to break the law but also don’t want to pay full price you can get a dubious but working key from sites like G2A and cdkeys
If that’s still too sketchy there’s the OEM licenses (honestly not worth it since they can only activate on a single machine ever)
Or finally you might feel sorry for Microsoft for some strange reason and want to go full retail price.
Basically the same experience with all options for a lot of cases, they’re just happy to have users it seems
Don’t pay the guys on G2A for keys - they’re just reselling stolen corporate MAK keys. They’re also not legal to the terms of the EULA, so it’s not a ‘genuine copy’ for the buyer either - you may as well just use Massgrave instead of funding crooks.
To add to your list of options: you can also just leave it unactivated forever.
It’ll whine about requiring activation with a ''Activate Windows. Go to Settings to activate Windows" message overlaying the bottom right corner of the screen - but that’s it, functionality is otherwise 99% unaffected (you can’t change wallpaper… Oh no). For Windows 10 it will now stop offering updates though - same as any standard Win10 copy, so I’d again recommend the Massgrave Dev route to keep the updates coming a few more years.
You may want to Google for a dev called Massgrave.
Is their GitHub account called massgravel (with an L at the end)? Or is that someone typo-squatting?
Just checked, massgravel (with an L) is right.
thanks, now it makes sense and it’s a nice reminder of why i left the windows eco-sphere over a decade ago
My work has licenses I can apply for VMs when I’m keeping them for longer client work, so yes they are licensed in my case.
I wouldn’t do that for my own personal use though.
i left the windows eco-sphere around 12ish years ago and coming back has shown me that nothing has changed.
?? Can’t you just use Massgravel?
if massgravel wasn’t doing their thing circa 2012, then i don’t know about it because that’s when i stopped used windows.
No why pay money for this to assholes,more over I use windows server edition which not possible to get if u are not business client and it cost 800$
i don’t want to and that’s why i asked.
i stepped back into the windows eco sphere recently after leaving it 12 years ago and was wondering how people were getting around the activation now-a-days
It probably depends on your uni, but students can get Windows Server licenses for free on Azure Education.
This. And fuck secure boot. Nowadays almost any of can run VMs flawlessly.
You can even use SecureBoot and TPM in a VM ;) OVMF EDK2 fully supports both ;)
SecureBoot is fine, sucks that vendors won’t add distro keys but you can do that yourself, or use the shim.
Or just disable it in UEFI and forget about it.
Security tools are there for a reason. Sure, I can encrypt my Linux rootfs, but that doesn’t stop anyone from tampering with the initramfs. Secure Boot + UKI does.
Cool. I still prefer to disable it.