Stuck on boot screen [logo] when attempting to access bios - Swift 3 SF314-42-R6T7

Hello, I am on an Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42-R6T7 bought here https://www.costco.com/acer-swift-3-14%22-laptop---ryzen-5-4500u---1080p.product.100575638.html, Windows 20H2) and I recently installed Pop! OS today as an attempt to dual boot.

But ever since then, whenever I attempt to enter UEFI (pressing F2), it just gives me the default boot screen, without the loader. I can boot into Windows by pressing power and not touching the function keys, but F2 freezes the computer screen.

I tried :
#1: Pressing F2
#2: Pressing DEL (no effect)
#3: Pressing F10 (no effect)
#4: Using Windows Advanced Startup to boot into UEFI

None of those worked, and I don't want to mess with the hardware to force it into BIOS.

So, how would I solve this issue and load into BIOS?

//Edited the content to add model name on title.

Accepted answers

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AnhEZ28

Did you try to update the BIOS?

billsey

From what I understand, Pop! OS rewrites the UEFI boot code, breaking the ability to boot into other OSes. You'll have to get it to boot to a Windows install boot flash drive then use that to rewrite the EFI partition. Once you are back to a stock EFI image you can go on to reinstall Windows. What you will want to do once you get into the Windows diagnostics environment is use the command prompt to have diskpart provide a drive letter for the EFI partition, then delete the Pop! OS files from that partition and have Windows restore it to normal.

Noah93

billsey said:

From what I understand, Pop! OS rewrites the UEFI boot code, breaking the ability to boot into other OSes. You'll have to get it to boot to a Windows install boot flash drive then use that to rewrite the EFI partition. Once you are back to a stock EFI image you can go on to reinstall Windows. What you will want to do once you get into the Windows diagnostics environment is use the command prompt to have diskpart provide a drive letter for the EFI partition, then delete the Pop! OS files from that partition and have Windows restore it to normal.

I unfortunately do not know how to do this very well
I have multiple EFI partitions (healthy), so I do not know where to rewrite.
I also do not want to reinstall Windows (Windows still works, it's just I can't change the boot order)

I deleted the Popos partition and installed Ubuntu on it, but to no result.

Could you provide links for the steps you described (and/or provide more detail)? That would make this process much easier for me.

billsey

Let's take a look at the partitions setup on the machine right now. There really only should be one EFI partition... Can you show a list of what's on it now and which format each is?

Noah93

billsey said:

Let's take a look at the partitions setup on the machine right now. There really only should be one EFI partition... Can you show a list of what's on it now and which format each is?

Well, I actually solved it by installing an optional firmware update, which I was waiting for because I didn't really want to use too much of my brain cells to try to solve it the way you described.

Afterwards I installed Ubuntu, saving Pop_OS! for consideration later.

Here's a screenshot of my partitions from Ubuntu (don't mind the BigSur-like GUI) :

Image: https://i.ibb.co/26BXNRh/image.png

Of the two EFI partitions (one of them is the first partition shown, the second is focused on) the one that is focused is not mounted nor named "ESP" partition. I think that this EFI partition was created when I installed and uninstalled Manjaro (and perhaps Windows thought that the system needed that partition to boot, thus it not letting me delete it)

So there you go, those are my partitions.

I would love to have confirmation that removing this partition is safe!

billsey

The two 535MB partitions are not EFI, they hold the recover software that then uses the 1.1GB partition for the OS image (actually not the full image, but enough to get up to the point where it can access the full image online). The 105MB partition looks like it's the only EFI partition on the drive. I don't know why Ubuntu is telling you that's an EFI partition, unless it's something weird and the size match with the Windows recovery software partition is just a coincidence.

Noah93

billsey said:

The two 535MB partitions are not EFI, they hold the recover software that then uses the 1.1GB partition for the OS image (actually not the full image, but enough to get up to the point where it can access the full image online). The 105MB partition looks like it's the only EFI partition on the drive. I don't know why Ubuntu is telling you that's an EFI partition, unless it's something weird and the size match with the Windows recovery software partition is just a coincidence.

Does this mean that nothing needs to be done on my machine (e.g, deleting partitions)?

billsey

It doesn't look like you need to delete any partitions, and the two we are looking at are really small anyway.

Easwar

Hi Noah93,

# Try to get the BIOS page.

1. Turn OFF the unit.

2. Press and hold the F2 key and turn on the unit.
3. You will be in setup utility page.
4. Once you got the screen release the F2 key.
5. Tap on F9 key and hit enter key without changing the option.
6. Tap on F10 key and hit enter key without changing the option.
7. Your unit will restart by itself.

Check this T/S and post the result.

Noah93

billsey said:

It doesn't look like you need to delete any partitions, and the two we are looking at are really small anyway.

Getting this aside, thank you for all the support you and this community have shown me. The only place I've known that shows nearly this amount of support is the Rust community (https://users.rust-lang.org/).

I found a little quirk in my system that was related to your most recent comment.
In the bios boot options, there's "ubuntu", "windows boot manager", and 2 identical options, "HDD: Samsung MZVLQF512HALU-00000".

These two identical options both boot me into a blank gray screen which is the color of the manjaro lock screen.
A couple seconds later it boots me into what it calls -> BusyBox v1.30.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.30.1-4ubuntu9.1) built-in shell (ash).
The prompt is "initramfs", and the keyboard layout is set to dvorak, the keyboard layout I used every single time I installed/re-installed a Linux distro.
"uname -a" gives me "Linux (none) [kernel version... random numbers]" Tuesday 23 02:59:01 UTC [processor architecture] GNU/Linux.
I'm imagining those two 537mb partitions are actually the two times I installed Manjaro and hastily deleted the partitions, but the boot partitions were left over. The thing is that the 1.1gb NTFS partition was labeled as something along the lines of "Microsoft recovery..." which makes what you said very likely. I remember going to /boot/efi (since the partition was mounted) on Ubuntu and seeing a Manjaro folder, is it as simple as deleting the folder?
I have not ever intentionally created a recovery partition for Windows in the case it gets deleted.
Could you please explain what I'm seeing on my machine and/or diagnose what is happening?

I would also like to ask if you know why the EFI boot code was overwritten with Pop!_OS? Was it my mistake, did I accidently overwrite it when I was manually handling partitions in the Pop!_OS live environment (I think the software was gparted) to try to create a dualboot? Because I'm planning on moving to Garuda Linux and don't want a repeat. Again, thank you for being so helpful, and I look forward to your next message!

billsey

That may be the EFI shell itself showing up when you select an OS that's listed in EFI but not actually installed. What is in the EFI partition? There should be .efi files on there for each OS.

Noah93

billsey said:

That may be the EFI shell itself showing up when you select an OS that's listed in EFI but not actually installed. What is in the EFI partition? There should be .efi files on there for each OS.

This is what /boot/efi yields, hope you don't mind the terminal representation

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/dc/tdgqabv114sb.png

Noah93

billsey said:

That may be the EFI shell itself showing up when you select an OS that's listed in EFI but not actually installed. What is in the EFI partition? There should be .efi files on there for each OS.

I don't think that I booted into the EFI shell, the EFI looks like this screenshot of the "UEFI interactive shell" I took from a virtual machine:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/wh/uvy22ls7y3js.png

Noah93

With a little investigating I think those two 537MB/512MiB are probably the two times I tried to install Popos.

First, I mounted both of the 537 partitions to /mnt, and I checked both partitions.

root@kudos-Swift-SF314-42:/mnt# ls partition4/EFI && ls partition5/EFI

BOOT Linux Pop_OS-a4588610-b6ac-442e-bbfe-12d37b4d334b systemd

BOOT Linux Pop_OS-b0a2b8aa-ac5c-43b7-9c60-d29e2bef3afb systemd

root@kudos-Swift-SF314-42:/mnt#

Considering one of the folders is prefixed with "Pop_OS," I'd say that those two 537MB partitions are actually from Pop! OS