How to Dual Boot Linux Mint and Windows 11

Hey What's up Guys KSK here, welcome back to another post.In this post, I will show you how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 11.This guide is one of the safest ways to set up a dual boot on any PC or laptop without any data loss. Also at the end of this post, I will show, how to remove Linux Mint safely from the dual boot. So make sure to watch the post till to the end to avoid any confusion.Keep in mind, This method is ExclusiveTo UEFI systems. For those, who are using the UEFI-GPT combination on their existing desktop PC or Laptop, then this method works flawlessly. As per my testing, If you follow this post, carefully you will be able to successfully dual boot your Pc or Laptop with Linux mint.Now to check if your system is running in which boot mode. Type MSINFO32 inside the run dialog and under the BIOS mode it says the status of your Computer. IN my case, My system uses the UEFI boot mode with a GPT formatted drive.The Pre-requisites of this post * You need a Windows 11 or 10 running on your PC or laptop. * Next, You need an 8 GB or higher pen drive to create a bootable disk with Linux Mint * Lastly, You need to reserve a minimum free space of 30GB or higher from your drive. That being said, moving into Step 1 - Downloading the Required Files Open your favorite browser & go to the official website of LinuxMint & download the latest version. By the time of recording this post, Linux mint 20.3 is the latest version available to be downloaded, in your case, it could be different, but the installation process will be similar. Next Up, head over to this website and download Balena Etcher, which helps in creating a bootable disk with Linux Mint. Once it's done downloading all of the files, Place them somewhere on your computer for easier navigation. Now, go ahead and install Balena Etcher on your computer.Step 2 - Allocating A Free Space For Linux mint Since we are installing Linux Mint alongside Windows 11 on the same drive, you need to allocate free space for Linux. To do so, open the Command Prompt, then inside here type this command.Now you can see the windows disk manager. Disk manager is a special tool in windows os that helps to manipulate the drives. This will list all of the connected drives.As you can see in my case only a single drive is visible. Drive 0 is the main SSD where Windows 11 has been installed.If you Notice, Drive 0 is using a GPT partition scheme, and you can see all of the partitions. The first Partition is known as EFI Partition or ESP which is where the windows boot loader is present, we will be using the same ESP partition to install a grub boot loader for Linux Mint. Next to the EFI partition, you can see a C partition where windows 11 files are located, and the last one is the recovery partition. Now, use the C or any other partition to shrink the free space for Linux mint.TO do this, right-click on the desired partition, and choose shrink volume. In my case I have plenty of space left on my drive, I am gonna allocate 100GB for Linux Mint, just type in MegaBytes.Once it’s done, tap on shrink this will create a brand new partition which is called unallocated. Using this free space, we gonna install Linux Mint in a moment.Step 3 - Creating Bootable Drive With Balena Etcher Now, go ahead, connect the USB drive to your Pc or Laptop, then open Balena etcher. Now, import the ISO, and Choose the USB drive, in this case, mine is showing as StorageJet. I am gonna choose this, and click on flash.Sit back & relax the process will take some time depending on the writing speed of your USB drive.Once it’s done, reboot your computer. 
Step 4 - Installing Linux Mint While it's rebooting head over to the BIOS Menu, By pressing the valid keys on your Keyboard, in my case F2 is the key to boot into BIOS. Inside BIOS, look for Intel Rapid Storage Technology and disable it. Also, make sure to disable the Secure boot during the LinuxMint installation just for a moment and I think Linux mint can run in a secure boot environment, any way, just disable it, Once you finish installing LinuxMint, you can reenable secure boot if you need it so.Now save the changes and reboot the system. While It's rebooting, this time hold F2, F12, or F10 to go to the boot menu. Here you can see your USB drive, if you don’t see your USB drive over here make sure you have enabled USB boot inside the BIOS. Now, choose your USB drive to boot into the live session of Linux Mint.Now, when you are inside the live setup of Linux Mint, you can try it before installing, for now, I am gonna proceed to installation. Go ahead and click on the install option on the desktop.Now, set up a system language, in this case, I am gonna use English as a default language & then click on next. Now for keyboard layout choose the English United States as a default Option.Now, enable this option to install any third-party media codecs, graphics & wifi drivers. Then click on continue.Next up, it shows the installation screen.If you are a beginner and don’t want to mess up partitions you can choose the first option. IF in case, you are planning to install Linux Mint on a separate drive, you can select the second option that way the installer will automatically create partitions for you and install the OS safely.For now, I am gonna choose something else and show you a more advanced way of creating partitions manually for Linux Mint.Now, Here, you can see all the drives connected to your computer. Make sure you have selected the Internal Drive which in my case is mounted as /dev/sda. Under this drive, If you notice, these are windows partitions and do not touch any of these which is going to destroy windows 11. We gonna use this free space to create only two partitions for Linux Mint.To do so, select the free space & click on the + button.Then allocate the free space for the root partition which is considered to be as main system partition, for now, I have 100GB of free space and I am gonna allocate 90GB for the Root.As you can see we have done creating a root partition. Lastly, we need to create a swap partition. GO ahead select the free space left, and use it as a swap area. Make sure, under the file system instead of EXt4 choose the swap area, and you don’t have to mention any mounting point for this partition. Then click on OK to create a Linux swap partition.Swap memory in Linux is nothing but a virtual memory. If your system is running out of physical memory it's gonna use a swap partition to store memory addresses.Right Now, we areinstalling Linux Mint on the UEFI system, So, by default, it must be having an EFI partition. This is where both windows and grub boot loader is located, and the installer will automatically install the grub boot loader into this system partition, all you have to do is just leave this option as it is.Now, click on the Install option & accept the changes.Then, choose your time zone & create a user account by entering the details.Nowsit back & relax, the installation process will take 5 - 20 minutes depending on the writing speeds of your drive.Once it’s done, go ahead & restart your computer by removing the bootable media. As you can see, this is the grub boot loader from here you can either boot into Linux Mint or Windows 11, for now, let’s just boot into Linux Mint.Final Step - Removing Linux Mint From Dual Boot Safely As a bonus part of this post, if in case you don’t like Linux Mint & decide to uninstall then Reboot your Computer To Windows 11. Now, inside windows 11, open disk manager by typing this command on the search bar or inside the command prompt.Here you can see, next to C Drive, the two partitions which we have created for Linux Mint. Just go ahead & delete these two partitions carefully one after the other.Once it's deleted, you can see an unallocated free space.You can use this free space in a windows OS by using an extended volume option.Lastly, we need to do one more important step to remove the grub boot loader from the EFI partition. For that, we need to take a Command prompt help, go ahead open the command prompt with admin privileges.Inside here type Disk part, then type list disk. As you can see, this is my main drive.We need to select this drive by typing this command.Then type list partition and it's gonna show all of the partitions present inside this drive. We need to look for a partition named system also known as EFI partition, in my case, it’s the first one. Select this partition by typing this command.Then assign a drive letter to mount this partition.Once thedrive letter is assigned to the EFI partition. Exit from the Disk part. Now, type this drive letter with a colon assigned for the EFI partition which In my case is letter X, and press the return key. Now, type cd EFI to change the directory into the EFI partition.Then, again type dir to see the contents on this folder, Here you can see both windows & Linux bootable files. Right now, it's showing as ubuntu, that’s because Linux Mint is Ubuntu-based Linux Distro. Any way remove this ubuntu folder by typing this command, this indeed is going to remove all of the grub files related to Linux Mint. That way, you won’t end up facing any grub issues. Once it's done, now you have successfully removed Linux Mint from the dual boot.Now restart the computer andyou can see the system should boot into windows 11 without any issues. That's pretty much it, If in case you like this post, hit the thumbs up down here & don’t forget to this blog & consider clicking the bell button to get notified whenever I post a new post.Also if in case you have any suggestions post them in the comment section down below.