Laptop with a problematic UEFI

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1

I own a janky old laptop (Acer Aspire 5560G) with buggy BIOS that makes almost any OS installed on a disk with GPT partition table nigh unusable, because it hangs on every reboot or poweroff. This is not a Fedora problem, it’s the same with every other Linux distribution and even MS Windows (it’s even worse here, because it can’t even finish the installation process properly), so for years I’ve just accepted it and were doing force legacy BIOS/MBR installs on this machine (which also hasn’t been easy, because it doesn’t have an UEFI/CSM switch and every installer gets railroaded “EFI way”, unless you work your way around), until I’ve tried FreeBSD, which somehow has managed to properly install itself on a GPT partitioned disk without a hitch, which made me wondering if it can be replicated on Fedora (my Linux distribution of choice). But I lack technical knowledge in order to properly investigate the issue myself, so maybe anyone has a similar experience or a suggestion how it can be done?

P.S.: BTW, is there a way to force Anaconda to use legacy BIOS/MBR route during the installation? I’ve managed to find a workaround using Ventoy and simply renaming/removing EFI binaries from its boot partition (which makes it “fall back” to legacy mode), but can it be done without the usage of third-party tools?

2

If you are able to get into BIOS, set “legacy boot”, disable “secure boot” then try your install …

3

On Linux, something like reboot=efi or reboot=pci might cause reboots to react differently; I usually use pci for hard-reboots.

With a few Acer’s with InsydeH2O UEFI I had to enable SecureBoot, manually-trust Fedora’s GRUB shim, then disable SecureBoot (I don’t use SB but GRUB entries wouldn’t auto-add properly and Acer only allowed customs via SB).

Usually with the boot menu (F12) it shows a difference between Legacy/CSM and EFI boots.

I’m not sure how to disable EFI on the boot media officially, but theoretically removing the EFI directory on it would have it non-bootable as UEFI. I’m thinking there’s a better way to choose between Legacy and UEFI booting though.

On Skylake and newer there may be something where booting from internal drives (SATA/NVMe) is only possible from UEFI and not Legacy/CSM; I workaround this on a Coffeelake Dell by booting Fedora’s installer in Legacy mode and using a SD card for booting (I can boot from SD but not NVMe with CSM)

4

There is no explicit BIOS option to enable compability support module in any way, shape or form, and Secure Boot isn’t implemented on this machine.

5

Thanks for the reply, I’m going to try some of it. A couple of remarks though:

  • this is a Phoenix® Tiano™ machine from early 2011, I think it predates Secure Boot existence;
  • it doesn’t differentiate between CSM and EFI boots, there is just one boot entry for boot media.

On Skylake and newer there may be something where booting from internal drives (SATA/NVMe) is only possible from UEFI and not Legacy/CSM; I workaround this on a Coffeelake Dell by booting Fedora’s installer in Legacy mode and using a SD card for booting (I can boot from SD but not NVMe with CSM)

I remember having some modicum of success with openSUSE distros in this way. IIRC, I tried to install it in legacy mode with GPT partition table and BIOS boot partition, and while it was unable to boot by itself (giving the “Operating System not found” message), it was able to do so when using Boot from Hard Disk installer option (it’s description is This will boot your hard drive in its current state, and completely ignore the installation. This will boot your current operating system, if present) from installation media on a USB drive; which implies that in some way it could work. Sadly, I don’t believe this machine is capable booting from SD cards, card reader itself does not appear in list of bootable devices in BIOS.

6

You might want to give this a try … it details how to get into the Advanced/Debug settings on Acer Laptop BIOS

1 Like
7

Thanks, but it didn’t work for me. Judging from screenshots I assume it works with InsydeH20 BIOS, which I don’t have.

8

This would benefit from a better description, but using a USB drive with setup_var might let you see a Legacy/CSM option to toggle.

With my Dell I use it to sometimes increase Intel GPU VRAM up to 2GB (defaults to 256MB); the BIOS doesn’t show a GUI option, but dumping my BIOS and reading the settings showed an option Aperture Size:

		OneOf Prompt: "Aperture Size", Help: "Select the Aperture Size", QuestionFlags: 0x14, QuestionId: 0x273D, VarStoreId: 0x1, VarOffset: 0x821, Flags: 0x10, Size: 8, Min: 0x0, Max: 0xF, Step: 0x0
			OneOfOption Option: "128MB" Value: 0
			OneOfOption Option: "256MB" Value: 1, Default, MfgDefault
			OneOfOption Option: "512MB" Value: 3
			OneOfOption Option: "1024MB" Value: 7
			OneOfOption Option: "2048MB" Value: 15
		End

It defaults to 1 (256MB), and I change it to hex 15 (2GB):

setup_var_cv Setup 0x821 0x1 0xF

For CSM I have something like:

			OneOf Prompt: "CSM Support", Help: "Enable/Disable CSM Support.", QuestionFlags: 0x14, QuestionId: 0x2804, VarStoreId: 0x1, VarOffset: 0x11A6, Flags: 0x10, Size: 8, Min: 0x0, Max: 0x1, Step: 0x0
				Default DefaultId: 0x0 Value: 1
				OneOfOption Option: "Disabled" Value: 0
				OneOfOption Option: "Enabled" Value: 1, MfgDefault