Huh?

I used Gparted recently on my laptop, and had no trouble installing Ubuntu Linux.

Unfortunately, as I used IE 9 to enter the message, you do not see it.  So, in a nutshell, the issue is a disk which is GPT (GUID) partitioned; formatting is not an issue.  A MBR partitioned drive works fine; it appears by your signature that (1) all of your drives are MBR drives and (2) much more importantly, you are NOT using a SANDY BRIDGE machine which is what the unseen message was about.

I have never had this issue before; I have installed MAC OS X and Linux on a dozen Dells (including an L701x last month) all of which boot from GPT drives without a hitch.

Not only can I not partition the disk as GPT, I cannot partition it MBR in any OS other than Windows.  I used the MAC OS to build a MBR disk, installed Windows to it and it would not boot.  I then attempted to restore Windows on the same disk using the Dell restore procedure and the restore process reformatted the entire drive wiping out the restore partition in the process (it went from 13.86GB to 786MB as a result of this process).  I tried it 2 more times with the same result.  Finally, I used Windows for the MBR partition process and the result restores and boots without issue.

The message from the failed boot is "Operation System not found"; I find it interesting that the message is not "Operating System not found".  Either the BIOS has been rewritten with a new message or the process is dying at a different location and the message is supposed to be some sort of indication of the actual error.

Bottom line, I believe this to be a Dell BIOS issue in the Sandy Bridge machines and I need it fixed, soon, or they're gonna get this one back as I cannot live with a machine which will not service my needs. 

I am running the A10 BIOS in this L702x; I have attempted this with every available BIOS; A04, A05, A07, A08 and A10.  None of them work.

Are you using the same version of the distro you installed successfully a month ago?  Was the previous L701x not a Sandy Bridge machine?

The short answers are 'yes' and 'no'.  Sandy Bridge laptops are the XPS 15/17 L502x/L702x; these are Cougar Point chipsets (HM67).  I have disks that I booted under the L701x which are not recognized by the new laptop; and I have tried the new Ubuntu 11.04 but that doesn't help, either. 

This really isn't so much a Linux question as  question to those in the Linux community who might have these new laptops.  If somebody has successfully booted a GPT (GUID) partitioned drive, I would like to hear about it.

I believe your problem is that the computer still uses a PC BIOS instead of the Extensible Firmware Interface.  I don't think the GPT partitioned drives put the boot code in the same place as found on an MBR drive, and the BIOS depends on having it the way it's done in the MBR drives.

Most PCs are BIOS-based; Macs are EFI based and require a GPT (GUID) partitioned drive.  I run MAC OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7 on my Inspiron 1525 (this machine), also on a Dell Inspiron 9400 (E1705), a Dell MINI 9 and a Dell MINI 1011; all are booting GPT partitioned drives.

GPT formatted drives have a fixed, pseudo-MBR partition positioned first on the drive to make them compatible with BIOS; generally, the boot loader places the initial boot code in this partition so the process can start.  I have never had an issue booting GPT drives on any BIOS-based machine I've owned or serviced.  For some reason, the SANDY BRIDGE machines will not work with a GPT drive.

If this is by design, it is an extraordinarily poor decision.  The GPT partitioning scheme is an Intel developed scheme allowing drives over 2TB with no need for extended partitions; it is the future and MBR is fast becoming an untenable process.  It appears to me that the BIOS for Sandy Bridge has been updated for support of the HM67 chipset and, in the process, it has been married to MBR partitioning; hopefully by accident with a fix on the way.

Thanks for the information.  You did nothing special to achieve a boot on a BIOS based device?  I've read at least one Microsoft page that stated Windows 7 64 bit and Vista 64 bit would boot only if the machine had UEFI based firmware.

EDIT:  Yes, before you tell me you are using LINUX not Windows, I figured that since Windows wouldn't read the boot code properly, neither could anything else.  LINUX works differently?

Actually, your close but backwards.  Vista 64 and Win 7 64 are the only Windows based OSes that will boot from a GPT drive; but it isn't easy.  Win XP won't even use them as separate data disks but all versions of Win 7 and Vista will, I believe.

Since most laptops only have one drive bay, a requirement to use a MBR partitioned drive for boot would be an inconvenience for me to say the least.  I use MAC OS X 10.6.7 as my everyday OS so I must have a GPT partitioned disk from which to boot.  With a 13" MacBook, 13" MacBook Pro and a MacMini Server in the house, running Windows is just no longer an option and while I use Linux from time-to-time, my development is strictly Mac-based. 

As the L701x (boots GPT) and L702x (doesn't boot GPT) both have 2 drive bays, you can work around the issue if your willing to lose a drive bay to MBR formatting by installing GRUB on the MBR drive which will allow OSes to boot from both drives even if the second one is straight GPT.  The L702x is a beautiful machine with one glaring flaw and it appears I will not be able to keep it; I may just have to start saving my nickels so I can buy that $2700 MBP ... 

Incredible...

Hi StarbucksSteve,

Did you have success on run  a GPT disk in a l502x?
I'm dealing with the same problem now.

I'm impressed with the fact of nobody from Dell is here to help us.

thanks for any help,
Antonio

Thanks. I read in another forum that Intel's chip has a bug and new XPS L*02x came with fix to this bug, but was inserted a new bug that affects the GPT use. With a L*01x GTP works fine with grub2 protected MBR. But we have a hope, the Phoenix Securecore Tiano BIOS used by DELL on XPS has a 2.0 version with support for UEFI. I realy hope that DELL do the update on our BIOS to this version.

Antonio

Good luck with that.  I have a XPX L702X with A14 as the BIOS revision, and all that's available on the drivers page is A12.  Go figure.  Apparently there are some ACPI issues as the only way I can get Linux to boot at all is with the ACPI=off.

I'm seriously considering this a CPU flaw, as I finally got Kubuntu 64bit live to boot, but I only see 1 cpu.  Yes, just 1 (CPU0).  Which means I may return it here by tomorrow if this isn't resolved.  

I'll buy an HP, at least they boot just fine.

In November I bought a dell XPS L502X laptop.

I send a message to linuxquestions.org (fedora forum).

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=4558224#post4558224

It shows the same problem this thread discusses.

The responses show that I did NOT get my problem resolved.

Maybe someone can get a clue from the second README.txt file?

Is there some way we can get someone from dell to help us solve this problem?

Marty

I did find a work-around.

I manually created disk partitions that are like what the fedora installer creates if you tell it to use all space

EXCEPT for the /boot partition.

I put the /boot partition on a USB flash disk.

Fedora 16 now works on my new laptop.

Since I only need the usb disk to boot this is not perfect but acceptable.

Marty

Another option to "enable UEFI" is to get a mod bios from here:

forum.notebookreview.com/.../641688-l702x-modded-gpu-bios-18.html

Full UEFI implementation seems to be , on Windows 8, it will go straight into windows 8 via GPT, UEFI, and you can only access the UEFI BIOS from Win8, any machines that "boot" from the bios then go into Windows 8 have Legacy Bios/UEFI Support.

In the L702X, the UEFI option does not exist unless you use the mod bios, and from comments on the web, even so, UEFI support is flaky at best.