EDIT: So after all that, I was able to reinstall windows and download Macrium reflect + my backup. First time I tried to recover it, it failed for some reason, but the second time around I was able to restore it successfully. I’m now back where I started, thank you everyone!
I’m not done with Linux yet, but I think I’m going to try and run it in a good VM for the time being. When I’m done with classes, or when I get a separate device, I will give it another go.
Post 1: https://lemmy.ca/post/3709382
Post 2: https://lemmy.ca/post/3863438
Yesterday I could at least change the order in the BIOS to boot windows. Now I can’t even do that.
I think when reinstalling, I must have overwritten something (the EFI?). I saw some other people that had a very similar experience, and the advice was to reinstall Windows. I’m currently downloading Windows installation media on another computer and I’m going to try and reinstall windows now.
This just keeps getting worse and worse, and thank you for the help while I struggle through this.
If anyone has other tips, I’d appreciate it :)
Are you booting in legacy BIOS or UEFI mode?
Legacy only supports one bootloader per drive, which should be grub. If you’re in legacy mode, windows was probably thrown out of there so it doesn’t show up anymore. Grub can still call the windows bootloader if you configure it accordingly.
The arch wiki page on grub has a section explaining the details.
It’s UEFI from what I can tell, at least that’s what comes up in the BIOS
In your BIOS do you have the option to add a new boot entry?
On my Dell laptop, I lost my Windows boot option once, but all I had to do was go into the BIOS, add a new boot option, and point it to the Windows EFI loader: EFI\Boot\Microsoft\bootmgrfw.efi
(I’m going off memory, so I could be off slightly with the path)
From what I remember, there weren’t many options in my BIOS. I’m not sure if it’s just my device or something else.
Someone else mentioned that I could have used the Windows 11 installation media to launch a terminal and fix it that way, but I had already cut my loses at that point and did the reinstallation.