BIOS / UEFI trouble [solved]

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mimosa
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BIOS / UEFI trouble [solved]

Post by mimosa »

A friend, with limited Linux experience, has a Lenovo laptop with InsydeH20 BIOS, dual booting Windows 10 and Salix. We were trying to boot a live USB and went into the BIOS, and now, it will only boot Windows; the Salix instalation no longer appears as a boot option.

Secure boot is enabled and fast boot is off.

I am in doubt as to whether the BIOS is at fault (by reverting its settings somehow, though I can't see any likely culprits) or whether Windows has interfered with the EFI boot options.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I vaguely remember some discussion on the Salix forum about how to get at the EFI settings from inside Windows, but couldn't find it when I searched.

The obvious route of using a Salix Live USB to fix the problem is not an otion because of the original difficulty booting from USB, which remains.
DidierSpaier
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by DidierSpaier »

Try to disable secure boot. This should allow to boot a non signed boot image.
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mimosa
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by mimosa »

That was the first thing I tried, though I believe (I could be wrong) Salix was booting with it set. But resetting it doesn't seem to "take" - the BIOS still records it as set in the line below. That makes me think this may be a buggy BIOS problem rather than a Windows/EFI one, as I was rather hoping; the BIOS is more likely to prove intractable.
DidierSpaier
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by DidierSpaier »

If at all possible, I would try to reinstall Windows in Legacy mode:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... -bios-mode

Also, I would look for a firmware update.

PS An Internet search with as arguments:
insydeh20 bios lenovo
might help.

Good luck.
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mimosa
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by mimosa »

Of course, I searched, probably with those very terms ... I suspect my friend will balk at flashing the BIOS or reinstalling Windows.I still haven't ruled out the second possibility that Windows has reset the EFI boot options. If that is the case, there is now a better alternative than using Windows to undo the damage, because he has managed to boot using a Ubuntu USB. However, I seem to remember that Ubuntu now "signs" itself as a "secure" OS, so this development has no diagnostic value. I have asked him to try Salix Live, and if that works the problem is most likely solved, but I remain cautiously pessimistic.
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laprjns
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by laprjns »

Given your fiends limit Linux experience and reluctant to reinstall Windows or upgrade firmware I would highly doubt that he would be able to make the necessary changes to boot Salix with Secure boot enable, so I believe that the secure boot was off. I have experience secure boot being enable by Window updates in the past so this could account for the change in state of Secure Boot on your friends computer. One way to check in Windows is to use EasyUEFI (https://www.easyuefi.com/index-us.html). This is the Windows version of guefi ;). The free version will shown the status of Secure Boot but it can't change it. Like guefi, EasyUEFI can change boot order and is able to edit the UEFI Boot Menu entries.
I don't have a Levono so I can't give you first hand experience but from googling it doesn't look like it is straight forward to turn off Secure Boot. Take a look at this page for the steps required to turn of Secure Boot on a Lenovo G50 laptop with InsydeH20 firmware. http://linuxbsdos.com/2015/07/27/how-to ... 50-laptop/
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mimosa
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by mimosa »

Anyone would think they were trying to make it difficult for you to turn secure boot off. I suspect the BIOS is wired to revert certain settings if you fail to boot more than a certain number of times, which would explain why this happened in conjunction with trying unsuccessfully to boot from USB.

Somewhat off topic, as I recall, rEFInd as installed on my home computer (currently hundreds of miles to the west) will show an inserted USB stick and allow you to select to boot from it, but that doesn't seem to be working for my friend. Perhaps a bootable stick needs to be present when rEFInd is first installed?

EasyUEFI looks like a useful tool if you were only able to boot Windows (as was the case here) though if they would like to make it live up to its name, they might do well to take a look at GUEFI. In fact my friend did manage to turn off secure boot again somehow (the obvious method of selecting to "Disable" it had no apparent effect). I then fixed the problem with efibootmgr, which is installed as standard in Ubuntu's Live. The instructions on the UEFI page on the Arch wiki happen to work perfectly with a normal install of rEFInd on Salix, just copying and pasting the command they give into a terminal (but do check first):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un ... _Interface
about half way down the page:

Code: Select all

# efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --loader /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi --label "rEFInd Boot Manager"
This assumes that the EFI partition is the first one on /dev/sda, and you are using rEFInd (rather than say GRUB). Helpfully, efibootmgr automatically makes the newly added item the first in its list, so you don't then need to mess with the order.

Thanks Didier and laprjns!
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laprjns
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Re: BIOS / UEFI trouble

Post by laprjns »

mimosa wrote:Somewhat off topic, as I recall, rEFInd as installed on my home computer (currently hundreds of miles to the west) will show an inserted USB stick and allow you to select to boot from it, but that doesn't seem to be working for my friend. Perhaps a bootable stick needs to be present when rEFInd is first installed?
No need to have a UEFI removable device installed when installing rEFInd. rEFInd will detect and present a boot menu for all removable disk that are installed (if you insert it after booting into the rEFInd screen, just hit the Esc key to refresh the rEFInd menu) as long as they are formatted to the UEFI requirements.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/using.html wrote:Ordinarily, rEFInd displays tags for OSes it finds on internal hard disks, external hard disks (including USB flash drives, CF disks, and so on), and optical discs. Sometimes, though, the firmware hasn't had time to fully examine these devices by the time rEFInd starts; or you might only insert or plug in the media after rEFInd appears. In these cases, you can press the Esc or Backspace (Delete on Macs) key to have rEFInd re-read its configuration file and re-scan your media for boot loaders. This action can take a few seconds to complete, so be patient. You can also use this feature to detect OSes if you launch a shell and use it to load a driver or edit the refind.conf file. If you regularly need to press Esc/Backspace, you might look into the scan_delay configuration file option, described on the Configuring the Boot Manager page.
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