The supposed update that fixed it (windows update) broke it worse than ever, took me quite awhile to figure it out.

There's no way Windows would just access non-readable partition, and do anything with it, let alone delete it. No operating system does this.

Replacing the bootloader is of course much more likely, but the general rule is that if you can manage to install Linux, you probably can follow basic instructions to fix GRUB or whatever your bootloader is.

Sadly VMs don't work with the Anti-Cheat rootkits, one of the only reasons I still have Windows

I haven't had dual boot problems since the early 2010s. I don't even know what I'm doing right.

Ladies and gentleman we got em

Well, but you could update windows, then reboot but boot into linux. That means the windows update can't fully complete yet. Now if you start up your PC the next day and it boots into Windows by default, the update process will continue.

I that why I never relate to this issue? I've had a dual boot setup for years by now and have always been able to choose either windows or Linux at startup, but they are on separate drives

Me too, the windows drive is in the garage

With super cheap SSD’s and motherboards with multiple m.2 slots, there’s rarely an excuse not to have different drives anymore. Laptops might be an exception.

I constantly tell people the remedy of the dangers of dual booting, using a separate drive for Linux. They sometimes listen and then have a dual boot system that doesn't break.

ish. if your boot priority is set to windows first and it decides it needs to repair the bootloader it can wipe other oses from the boot order.

What definitely did happen to me is I booted into windows, shut down, on the next startup there was no more grub menu, just instant boot into windows. (Separate physical drives).