5 Posts
0
279690
Latitude 5590, UEFI Boot sequence empty
Hello to everyone,
I have a Dell Latitude 5590 and although I can access the Bios, the UEFI information about the bootable devices is empty therefore unable to install Windows 10 Pro.
However, when installing Windows 10, it detects the M2 Sata during the installation process, it goes to install itself and then nothing happen after the first restart because the UEFI information does not point towards the M2 Sata.
I am lost as this also happens after updating the BIOS firmware,
The screenshots are from the UEFI, and hopefully one of you can help me please,
Many thanks,
EMPF
jphughan
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
14K Posts
0
May 4th, 2019 16:00
Windows Setup is supposed to handle registering the newly installed Windows environment into the UEFI firmware. Since that doesn’t seem to be happening, try these things:
- Enable Secure Boot to make sure you’re booting your Windows install media in UEFI mode.
- When you get to the point in Windows Setup where you select where to install it, make sure the entire target disk is shown as unallocated space, with no existing partitions. If you see partitions, delete them so that Windows installs onto an empty disk and can create the desired partitions appropriately.
If you still can’t get it working, does the SSD appear in the F12 one-time boot menu? That list is dynamically generated rather than relying on registration, so it should be listed there as long as Windows installed properly? If so, you can manually add a boot entry even though you shouldn’t have to. You’d want to point it to the \EFI\Boot\Bootmgfw.efi file on the SSD’s EFI partition. You should be able to browse to that file in the Add Boot Option interface.
Need further assistance? Use the "Get Help Now" option at the bottom right to chat with a Dell technician right away.
empf
5 Posts
0
May 5th, 2019 07:00
Thank you Jphughan for your help. Turning back on Secure Boot remembered the SSD after a reboot. Something I was unable to achieve earlier. Nice one!
jphughan
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
14K Posts
0
May 5th, 2019 08:00
@empf happy to help! FYI you don’t need to disable Secure Boot to install Windows as long as you’re installing Windows 8 or newer. Even some Linux distros support it now. Secure Boot is a useful anti-rootkit measure, so you should only disable it if you see a message that specifically says that Secure Boot is what prevent you from booting to the selected device AND that error is actually expected for whatever you’re trying to boot. For example, I once saw a thread here where a user started seeing the Secure Boot integrity check failure error just trying to boot their system normally all of a sudden. Another user replied telling them to just disable Secure Boot. That does work around the error and allow the system to boot, but that error shouldn’t have occurred in the first place in that scenario, so it could have been caused by the bootloader having been compromised by malware. So disabling it in that situation is a bit like disabling your home alarm system when it gets tripped without bothering to see if maybe a burglar got in.
jphughan
4 Operator
4 Operator
•
14K Posts
3
May 5th, 2019 09:00
@empf in addition to my reply above, here's what was probably happening on that system when you reported the problem and why enabling Secure Boot fixed it. When Secure Boot is disabled, it's possible to enable an option to allow your system to support Legacy BIOS booting in addition to (or even instead of) UEFI booting. So if you had that option disabled, you probably booted your Windows installation media in Legacy BIOS mode rather than UEFI mode. Windows installations have to be set up differently depending on whether they'll be booted in Legacy BIOS or UEFI mode, and Windows decides which way to install itself on your hard drive based on how you booted the installation media itself. So while you had Secure Boot disabled, if you booted your install media in Legacy BIOS mode (whether you meant to or not), then Windows Setup would have set up the hard drive for Legacy BIOS booting. The issue is that Latitude xx90 models only allow Legacy BIOS booting from external devices like USB flash drives; when booting from internal storage devices, they'll only boot in UEFI mode, and in your case the Windows installation on your disk wasn't set up for UEFI booting, so it was unbootable.
On most systems (including older Latitude models), if you enable Legacy BIOS boot support, it applies to all boot sources, and in that case you wouldn't have had this problem. However, if you have a system that supports UEFI booting, you really want to perform a UEFI installation anyway. UEFI installations tend to boot a bit faster, and they can take advantage of Secure Boot, which Legacy BIOS installations can't. So in this case, that restriction on Legacy BIOS booting helped you end up with a better outcome than you would have had if it didn't exist.
By the way, if the only reason you tinkered with those options was because you were trying to get your USB device to appear in the BIOS Setup boot order because you thought you had to do that in order to boot from it, that's not the right way to do things. The proper way is to press F12 during the initial boot in order to access the one-time boot menu. That will list available boot options and allow you to choose a non-default boot device that one time. Not only is that more convenient for "one-off" boot operations like this compared to tinkering with the boot order beforehand and then having to go back change it back afterward, but it's also the only way to boot in UEFI mode from sources that aren't "registered" into the firmware to appear in the BIOS Setup list. The boot options in the F12 boot menu are populated dynamically based on the detected devices and their contents. If you were to go back into your BIOS, disable Secure Boot, and enable Legacy booting, THEN check the F12 menu while your flash drive was connected, you'd see it listed twice -- once under Legacy Boot Options and once under UEFI Boot Options (possibly with slightly different names). That selection matters, but again if you just keep Secure Boot enabled, your system will only allow UEFI booting, so you'll be fine. :)
Steve Bungay
17 Posts
0
July 7th, 2020 23:00
The issue we have with this solution is that the external media such as USB is not recognised if Secure Boot is selected. To use external USB, we have to select legacy media. So, what solution we have wherein we need to use USB for installation and want it to restart in UEFI mode or how do we add hard disk as start media at restart / reboot.