DISCLAIMER

This post documents what I did to enable dual-booting Linux with Windows on my Windows 11 computer. This is for informational purposes only, and I cannot be held liable if you manage to mess up your computer by following these instructions, whether partially or entirely.

Keep in mind that your computer or default configuration may be slightly or significantly different from mine, which may require different steps. Be careful executing any commands or making any changes you don’t understand as you can ruin your computer (prevent it from booting, losing data, etc.)

You need to know what you’re doing to enable dual-booting on your computer, and you are taking a risk that you will render your computer inoperable (yes, I also accept this risk every time I’m repartitioning or enabling dual-booting).

Very Important

As always, before making any significant changes, and I cannot stress this enough:

  1. back up all your data (off the computer, whether to another removable drive, or to a cloud service, or elsewhere) and also
  2. create an emergency recovery disk in case you need to reinstall Windows.

A little while ago,1 we worked through some issues to enable dual-booting Linux on our Windows desktop. As that computer reached its planned obsolesence by being deemed ineligible to upgrade to Windows 11, a new computer had to be acquired, and with it, the same desire to dual-boot into Linux.

However, the steps we had to go through before now, in retrospect, seem like child’s play compared to what awaited us this time with Windows 11. So, to save you some headaches and avoid bricking your machine, here’s what I had to do to enable dual-booting for my computer this time.

Let’s try what we did last time

As before, we’ll try to install the latest Ubuntu LTS release, which for us in June 2026 happens to be Ubuntu 26.04.

As we learned last time, there are no minimal ISO images released for Ubuntu, the default option that we end up selecting is the Desktop ISO which is 6.1GB, but to be on the safe side, we have a 16GB USB flash drive ready to go.

To make this realistic, we’re doing all of this from the same computer, so we are not using another Linux machine to help us with the process, so we’re opening Windows and downloading the ISO image there.

Now we need to burn the ISO image to make a bootable USB flash drive. For this, there’s the amazing Rufus tool, which also happens to be open source, which is a definite plus. This is the same tool we used last time, so we know it works.

Since we’re not going to be making bootable USB drives on a regular basis but just need this as a one-off case, instead of getting the regular installer, we download the portable binary. At the time of this writing, the latest version is 4.14 from 30 Apr 2026, so we get the rufus-4.14p.exe and we’re on our way.

We launch the Rufus app, follow the very simple instructions in the intuitive UI (seriously, I haven’t read any of the Rufus docs, it’s so easy to use), we burn the ISO image to the USB flash drive.

OK, let’s install Ubuntu!

Reboot the computer with the USB flash drive in place and … nothing happens. Well, not nothing, it just immediately boots into Windows. The USB flash drive was ignored. Or maybe it doesn’t work? Or it’s not bootable?

Let’s reboot again, this time we repeatedly tap the F2 key during the boot sequence to get into the BIOS setup. Once in the BIOS setup, we see the issue in the boot configuration section: the boot order and priority of the USB drive is far below the default NVMe drive, so the default boot loader (which loads Windows) runs first, and the USB flash drive never gets the time of day.

OK, let’s fix this! Too bad the mouse seems to be acting kind of weird (this may be just my setup: it’s moving up, but not down, making it hard to use…)

It’s OK, we’ll use the keyboard. Raise the USB flash drive boot priority all the way to the top, save, and exit.

Upon rebooting, it boots into Ubuntu 26.04!

So we’re done? Can it really be that easy?

Well… not quite, of course. That would be too easy, and having read the introcution, you know this is not going to be a walk in the park.

By the time we get to the installation screen, the UI does not recognize that I have a hard disk on this computer. It only lists the 16GB USB flash drive as a valid destination. The drop down has no other options. This is clearly not going to work.

After some research online, we learn that we need to disable fast startup in Windows. So, of course, we need to reboot into Windows again.

Then, we need to run this command in the cmd.exe terminal window:

C:\> powercfg -h off

But that doesn’t work, because we don’t have admin privileges.

Here, we have two options:

  1. open the terminal, rather cmd.exe with Admin privileges (right-click on cmd.exe when searching for it from the start menu), or …

  2. let’s pretend this is Linux when it’s actually Windows, and use sudo:

    C:\> sudo powercfg -h off
NOTE

For the Windows purists, you can also run:

C:\> powercfg /h off

but this is a Linux blog, so to the extent possible, we will use reasonable flag formats.

Naturally, we choose the second option, which doesn’t work because our terminal doesn’t have the correct admin permissions (the first option would have been faster). Fixing that, we run the command, and reboot into Ubuntu. But… since we remooved the USB flash drive last time, the BIOS lost all knowledge of it, so this requires 2 reboots (again):

  1. one reboot into the BIOS to increase the priority of the USB flash drive to the top
  2. one reboot to actually reboot into Ubuntu

OK, let’s install Ubuntu! …right?

Well yes, but actually no.

Turns out that this may have been necessary, but clearly not sufficient to make the drive visible to Ubuntu, and we’re back to square one.

After some more research, we learn a few more things:

  1. We need to turn off Bitlocker encryption (if it’s enabled) as Ubuntu can’t access Windows-encrypted drives
  2. We need to convert the drive configuration from RAID to AHCI

Checking and disabling Bitlocker encryption

First, check if you have Bitlocker encryption enabled. Of course, you need to reboot into Windows for this. Here’s a tip: just don’t count how many times you’re rebooting into Windows and Linux, and you’ll feel better not knowing. Yes, it’s a lot.

You can check via settings:

  1. Click Start, type Settings, and press Enter.

  2. Select “Privacy & security” on the left pane.

  3. Click “Device encryption”.

    • If the toggle is set to on, your disk is encrypted.
    • If the option isn’t visible, your device does not support it or encryption is disabled (or maybe you’re not logged into an Administrator account)

Another way to check is via System Information. This method bypasses the Settings app and reveals if encryption is currently active or why it’s hidden.

  1. Click the Start menu, type System Information, press Enter

  2. Scroll to the very bottom of the System Summary list on the right.

  3. Look for the row named “Device Encryption Support”.

    • If it says “Elevation Required to View” (which is what I saw), then you can’t see it because you’re not logged in as administrator (but Windows 11 by default creates a non-admin account…)

Check via command line:

  1. Click the Start menu, type cmd.exe

  2. Right-click on it and start with Administrator privileges

  3. Run:

    C:\> manage-bde -status
INFO
You would think that running sudo manage-bde -status would have the same effect, but alas, that command produces no output. However, running sudo cmd.exe opens another terminal with administrative privileges, and running manage-bde -status there provides the same output as above.

In my case, the output of the command above showed that my C: drive was not encrypted, which was good for me. If your drive is encrypted, there’s a more complicated process to follow which you’ll need to research separately.

You will need to have your (very long) encryption key saved and available offline (i.e., off your computer) because you will need it later, and if you don’t have it or lose it, you will not be able to boot back into Windows, and Microsoft will not be able to help you.

WARNING
Bottom line: please read the docs very carefully before disabling and re-enabling Bitlocker encryption.

Convert SATA config from RAID to AHCI

The other thing to do is to convert disk mode from RAID to AHCI. Why is RAID enabled by default when we only have a single NVMe drive is unclear, but that’s how it is.

Very Important
It is very important to note here is that before you make any changes in the BIOS, you have to prepare Windows to make this switch. Making the change immediately in the BIOS will render your computer unbootable.

Here are some sources I read and followed:

And here are the specific sequence of steps I took:

  1. run (cmd.exe as admin):
C:\> bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal

You need to see output: “The operation completed successfully.”

  1. Reboot into safe mode

    1. Reboot, keep pressing F2 (or whichever key your BIOS required)
    2. Enter BIOS / UEFI settings
    3. Open storage settings. This could also be called SATA configuration settings; it could also be under Advanced settings tab.
    4. Locate the SATA operation or controller mode, which is likely set to RAID or “Intel RST / VMD”
    5. Change this setting to AHCI
    6. Save your changes and exit the BIOS

  2. Reboot again into Windows

  3. Open the Start menu, type cmd.exe, right click on Command Prompt, and select “Run as administrator”

  4. In the new terminal, run:

    C:\> bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot

OK, now when we reboot into our Ubuntu via the USB flash drive, we’ll be able to install it, right?

Did you remember to back up?

Well, not so fast. Did you create Windows recovery drive and back up all your data? If not, now is the time to do it. Actually, the best time to do it was at the beginning of this adventure, but the second best time to do it is now.

Create a Windows recovery drive

What is a Windows Recovery Drive? Per Microsoft support:

Quote
The Recovery Drive utility in Windows is a valuable tool designed to back up essential system files needed to restore a PC to its original state. This utility creates a USB recovery media that can help you restore your Windows device to its factory settings, even if you replace the hard drive or completely wipe the drive. The recovery media includes built-in Windows files, any updates installed at the time of media creation, and any customizations from the PC manufacturer, ensuring a reliable backup solution for bare metal recovery scenarios.

So you definitely want to have one of these on hand when you’re switching your system to dual-boot, modifying the boot configuration, repartioning the disk, etc.

However, following the instructions above, I ran into the same issues as discussed in this forum thread. And what’s even more confusing, other folks who had similar issues with creating Windows 11 Recovery Drives ended up making it work by selecting Windows 7 Recovery Drive in the settings, and it seemed to work for them.

In my experience, although selecting the entirely unintuitive “Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” option, it still refused to accept a USB flash drive as a target drive.

However, I notifed that it could support network drives which was confusing, because both of them are “removable” and hence impermanent, but sure, we can play this game:

  1. Insert your new USB flash drive that you will dedicate to Windows Recovery Disk

    • It will need to have at least 32 GB of space on it per instructions.
    • You will want to remove the Ubuntu flash drive from your computer while you do this so you don’t accidentally overwrite it.

  2. Open File Explorer and find the USB flash drive in the list

  3. Enable sharing of your USB flash drive over the network — yes, that’s right, not a joke

    1. Right-click in your USB flash drive
    2. Select “Properties”
    3. Open the “Sharing” tab
    4. Select “Advanced sharing”
    5. Enable sharing
    6. Enable all permissions (read/write/etc.)

  4. You’ll have to select a name for your shared USB drive

Now that you’ve done this, go back to creating the Windows Recovery Drive, and for the target, use the network name for the USB flash drive:

\\COMPUTER_NAME\Shared_folder_name

When it asks for username/password, since we did not enable authentication, you can use any text: I literally used none / none and it worked.

NOTE
While Windows 11 did tell me it sucessfully created a Recovery Drive, since my workflow was successful and I did not require the use of the Recovery Drive, I (thankfully) did not get to test if it’s actually works, so YMMV!

Back up all your data

While we’re here, don’t forget to back up any important data from your computer to an external drive, a cloud drive or other storage device. This is up to you, so I don’t have any suggestions here.

Reboot and install Linux

Now that you’ve followed all the above instructions and you rebooted into Ubuntu 26.04 (having once again increased the priority on the USB flash drive, so this will require 2 reboots), when you get to the installation step, Ubuntu will highlight 1 partition on your NVMe drive for installation, but don’t be fooled!

WARNING

THIS IS A TRAP!!!

That sole partition is your primary Windows partition. Installing there will destroy your Windows installation.

Instead, you will want to repartition your disk, either via Windows Disk Management, or by using Ubuntu manual partitioning at installation time.

At a high level, you will want to shrink your primary Windows partition to some amount (note: you can’t shrink it below it’s current set of files, but don’t forget to include any growth!) and create a separate partition on the remaining empty space for Linux.

How big these partitions should be is really up to you, and the mechanics of using partitioning tools to repartition your disk is out of scope for this guide: please see the links above to the relevant documentation from Microsoft and Ubuntu.

For the filesystem, I selected the conventional ext4 (rather than Btrfs or XFS), and it seems to be working just fine.

After a (hopefully) successful installation, be sure to reboot into Windows and then back to Ubuntu to make sure everything is working, and you’re all set!

Have fun with your new dual-booting configuration!

  1. That was in 2019, which was 7 years ago (!!) ↩︎