14.04 on new hardware. Error about not supporting smbios newer than 2.8

[Frank616]

Qqmike:

OK, did as you said and disabled secure boot and CSM. I was unable to disable Fast Boot, as there is no setting in the UEFI setup for that. (UEFI boot cannot be disabled either. It shows an entry for that, but it is greyed out) I then reinstalled Kubuntu 14.04 64 bit from the latest image available. Boot order shows SATA-3 (Samsung SSD with Kubuntu installed) as the first boot device, but NO GO. It skips right past it every time.

No change. Blasted thing still goes straight to Windows no matter what I do.

I can boot into Linux on this machine, and it runs just fine if I choose the one-time boot option on startup. When I do that, I get the option to boot Windows on SATA-1, or Ubuntu on SATA-1. It is using the Windows loader, not GRUB, even after running sudo update-grub.

I turned Secure Boot back on again and tried rebooting again, hoping it would see the signed Linux kernel. Nope. Still boots Win10.

There is a way to turn off fast boot from within Windows, but I don't see it making a difference. The boot sequence gets hijacked before it even gets there. The problem is getting the blasted machine to see anything other than the Windows boot loader on SATA-1.

I am beginning to suspect that the Lenovo UEFI firmware will boot Windows, only Windows, and nothing but Windows.

Anyway, still looking for a way around this if possible. I can get Linux running on the machine just fine using the one-time boot option, but if ever I have to reboot, only going through the trouble of selecting a one-time boot again will get Linux back on again. This is my wife's machine, so the simpler the better.

Thanks.

Frank.

[Qqmike]

It sounds like you have done everything very well, so far. That leaves ... trying rEFInd. rEFInd would present a boot menu that one can read and use; in fact, you can even customize it (perhaps with some configuration effort). It would be nice to know if rEFInd can find and boot the Kubuntu (using Kubuntu's grub).

(Just a crazy notion ... that it almost sounds like Windows is controlling the so-called Default boot loader (in the ESP), and it keeps overriding everything else. Or, this is a bug? Or, hopefully unlikely, that Lenovo has locked something down.)

[Qqmike]

And/or, maybe someone here has experience with this Lenovo w/Windows; or simply has other ideas to try. I imagine you searched? Something like, Lenovo fails to dual boot Windows 10 with ... etc.

[Frank616]

SOLVED - 14.04 on new hardware. Error about not supporting smbios newer than 2.8

All:

Problem resolved with the Creator's update of Windows 10 applied today.

The previous version of Windows 10 was doing something behind the scenes to prevent Linux from booting. Applying the Creator's update today, however, changed that. Windows has to reboot several times (as we all know and get old watching) when doing an upgrade. On the first reboot, it showed the GRUB boot menu (first time ever on this machine), and continued to do so through every reboot after that. With the default being Linux, it dropped into that after the first reboot, then I had to select Windows each successive reboot after than to get Windows 10 to fully upgrade. Now that it has all settled down, The GRUB menu comes up normally, as it should, and the default is still Kubuntu, as I had selected.

Now I just need to move my wife's data files from the mechanical HDD to the SSD that runs Kubuntu, and the job is done.

Anyway, valuable lesson learned, and a grudging 'thankyou' to MS for finally putting things back the way they are supposed to be.

Frank.

[Qqmike]

Hey Frank616, many thanks for that update and feedback on your case.

(On my wife's laptop w/Windows10, I had seen that Creator update pop-up but have not had time to research it to see if it's a good thing to accept. You seem to have a good impression of Creator?)

[Frank616]

Qqmike:

My opinion of Windows cannot be discussed in polite company.

As to the Creator's update, it resolved an issue. I have no idea how many more it will create. What it HAS done is to allow me to put my wife's new machine back to using Linux again. I don't expect to go back to Windows for anything again any time soon.

Frank.

[Qqmike]

Thanks

[GreyGeek]

Frank, knowing MS as well as we do, that "fix" was probably an oversite on MS's part. Expect the next update to restore your previous situation.

[Frank616]

Qqmike: And thank you SO much for your kind help in trying to sleuth this.

GreyGeek: Yeah, quite possible. However, now that it will boot into Linux, I may never reboot it in Windows again anyway.

Frank.

[GreyGeek]

...

GreyGeek: Yeah, quite possible. However, now that it will boot into Linux, I may never reboot it in Windows again anyway.

Frank.

Well ... if that's the case the obvious thing to do is to capture ALL of the disk for Kubuntu by deleting the Windows partition and giving it ALL to a fresh install of Kubuntu. Why drink from only half the cup?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Frank616]

GreyGeek:

Sadly, Windows is still the lowest common denominator in the computing world, and I already paid for it when I bought the machines. Therefore, I reduce the partition to about 30 GB, and just leave it there, using the rest of the disk for Linux. Some BIOS and ROM flashing software has no Linux equivalent.

On most of my machines I now have two drives -- an SSD system disk with Linux, and the mechanical data disk that also has Windows on it. The same is true now with my wife's machine. In her case, the 250 GB SSD will likely be all she ever needs, so I'll just leave the 500 GB Windows drive in there. Or, I may even take it out and put it in a drawer like I have done with some 'netbook' sized laptops that I have that can physically only take one drive.

Frank.

[GreyGeek]

I can understand that. After I retired in 2008 I left my WinXP partition on my HD till I installed Kubuntu 14.04, then I moved it to VirtualBox. Over the years I'd log into the XP side or VB side every now and then to allow updates. The last involved 218,000 updates. The time when my former employer might ask me for help on the projects I was in charge of had long past and the only reason I was keeping XP around was to run the IQAN PCL graphical dev tool thatt I used to write a control program for an ag tractor. I decided to see if WINE and/or PlayOnLinux would run that tool and to my pleasant surprise WINE did!

At the same time Neon came out and I decided to abandon XP and VB and install Neon with WINE and Btrfs. Then another pleasant surprise popped up. This 2012 Acer V3-771G 17" laptop has a secondary NVidia GT650M GPU which cannot be set as the primary in the BIOS, so I was always running the Intel HD graphics driver, which is rather low end. On a lark I installed nvidia-378 and suddenly my GT650M was driving my DE as if it had been set as the primary in the BIOS! When I had experimented with that GPU using BumbleBee and Otimus in 14.04 the results were less than satisfactory. Now, my DE sizzles! Minecraft 1.12 running Optifine can give me up to 500 fps!

That's the nice thing about Linux (Neon). It's already better than any WinXX DE and just keeps getting better and better.

[Frank616]

GreyGeek:

That's the nice thing about Linux (Neon). It's already better than any WinXX DE and just keeps getting better and better.

Yep!

I belong to a volunteer organization that is 100% Windows. It is for this reason that I keep it around. So far, however, I have not needed Windows to interact with them. A lot is now Office 365, and while I still have to hold my nose while I use it, Chrome or Firefox on Linux work just fine with it.

On a lark I installed nvidia-378 and suddenly my GT650M was driving my DE as if it had been set as the primary in the BIOS!

Yeah, I should try the latest nVidia drivers again too. My Dell M6600 is getting old, and for a while, the nVidia driver didn't like my genuine nVidia GF104GLM video card, so I installed the nouveau driver instead. Lost all the special effects, but it stopped crashing.

Frank.

[GreyGeek]

GreyGeek:
...
I belong to a volunteer organization that is 100% Windows. It is for this reason that I keep it around. So far, however, I have not needed Windows to interact with them. A lot is now Office 365, and while I still have to hold my nose while I use it, Chrome or Firefox on Linux work just fine with it.
.... .

You've probably noticed that we answer a lot of Windows questions here and no one bats an eye.