Cannot access BIOS setup on laptop

Installing Zorin OS
30

I have finally got everything sorted!

That was a marathon. You're right EasyBCD isn't compatible with UEFI. EasyUEFI (Free trial) was excellent for what I needed. After flashing BIOS a couple of times, the boot failed to load the windows boot manager either, so I was left in the grub cli.

So, in the end I needed to perform these additional steps:

  • Run boot-repair from the Zorin Live USB. (this corrupts BIOS)

  • Reboot into installed Zorin.

  • Install rEFInd to replace grub as boot manager.

  • Reboot into Windows.

  • Reflash the BIOS using Fujitsu's utility (this fixes BIOS)

  • When it loads into grub cli, manually boot into windows efi, like this, but replace hd0,gpt1 with the correct partition:

insmod part_gpt
insmod chain
set root=(hd0,gpt1)
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
boot

When Windows loads:

  • Run EasyUEFI

  • Click Add Item > Select Linux or other OS > name it rEFInd

  • Check the partition containing the rEFInd boot loader

  • Browse to "/EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi" for the file path

  • Click OK to create the rEFInd entry in BIOS boot options.

  • Move the entry to the top of the list.

Reboot and you're done!

I now have both a dual booting system with Zorin and Windows AND a BIOS that I can configure and boot from USB sticks :sweat_smile:, seems like such a simple thing at first....

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