Acer Aspire ES 15 (ES1-533-C3UW): Legacy BIOS Missing

JirkaKonca
JirkaKonca Member Posts: 2 New User
edited October 2023 in 2020 Archives

Hello,

 

I have problem - I want to install Ubuntu Linux on laptop which has Linput Linux Lite. Problem is, that no device, USB or DVD, can be used to boot, as laptop doesnt even allow such option. Formus say that it works after changing Boot method from UEFI to Legacy, but my BIOS offers only UEFI.

 

To install Ubuntu i am using .iso file burned to DVD.

 

Can you help?

 

Acer_E15_01UEFI-only.jpg

 

Acer_E15_02Bootmanaget.jpg

 

 

«13

Answers

  • Hi,

    Have you tried disabling Secure boot, move to Secure boot(in the first Pic) with arrow keys, click on Enabled and change to disabled.

  • JirkaKonca
    JirkaKonca Member Posts: 2 New User

    Hi I tried that with no luck. Actually, the secure boot is displayed as Disabled, but BIOS still requires supervisor password before entering the BIOS editing tool... Before setting Supervisor password access to BIOS was not restricted, now the password is required to access BIOS settings edit and Secure boot disable/enable seems to have no effect on that.

     

    Anyway, the main problem - that UEFI is the only option in Boot Mode - still persists. Secure Boot settings didnt change anything.

    thx Jirka

  • OK, please wait for someone else to help youSmiley Sad

  • Pencho1
    Pencho1 Member Posts: 1 New User

    I have the same problem. I can not boot Linux Mint frоm flash drive. The boot mode can not be changed to legacy. I am about to return the laptop becase of this. As far as I see there is no solution yet . And Acer what were you thinking when removing the legacy option ? This is madness.

  • Yngvar
    Yngvar Member Posts: 1 New User

    Just bought the same latop two days ago and have been trying to install a linux distro for at least the last 24 hours with no luck. No having a legacy boot option is really not helping. It's a shame modern hardware seems to be so hostile to non Windows OS-es.

     

    Am also considering returning the laptop as i bought it specifically to make it my linux machine for learning the OS.

  • StuartA
    StuartA Member Posts: 1 New User

    I have the same issue, unable to get machine out of UEFI boot mode.

     

    My problem with selecting Legacy instead of UEFI boot mode was compounded when i upgraded my BOIS from 1.04 to 1.07.

     

    The boot mode is no longer selectable optio in the BIOS.

     

    I did try contacting Acer support, however was simply told to install a non UEFI OS and it would open the option up, though not sure how I am going to do that when i cannot get mahine into legacy mode to install legacy mode OS

     

     

  • Sladek90
    Sladek90 Member Posts: 5 New User

    I have suceeded booting linux live media. But at the end linux (any distribution I know) cannot be installed. I know it, because I have been trying hard during last three weeks. Finally I gave up and gave it to professional. He failed as well and told me that it was for the first time in his life.

    It seems that the UEFI implementation is really bad and does not allow to install anything else but windows.

    So I can say that I bought (for seemingly reasonable price) a big piece of junk. At least I learned that I shall never buy any Acer product in the future and will advise the same to anyone.

  • tonywh
    tonywh Member Posts: 1 New User

    This all looks very familiar. I've been trying to install Linux (Ubuntu 16.10) too.

     

    I have found a few things but still have not succeeded. In the end I can get right through the installation up to the point where it tries to change the booting. Then the install crashes.

     

    To boot from the bootable install drive I enabled the F12 boot menu in the Main section of the setup, then pressed F12 instead of F2 during power up. Was then give the option of Windows Boot Manager or Linux (Flash).

     

    In the setup I also set the Supervisor Password and then I was able to

    • disable secure boot
    • disable the TPM (Trusted Platform Module)

    However, neither of these fixed the problem.

     

    I have tried dual-boot installion, Linux only installation (yes overwriting Windows - but made a recovery disk first). I have also tried Ubuntu boot-repair to fix up the boot loader after the failed installation. 

     

    Haven't got anything to work yet. For me they all crash when trying to install the boot loader.

     

    I'd love to hear if anyone has a solution for this.

     

  • Sladek90
    Sladek90 Member Posts: 5 New User

    I gave up my attempts, because the computer was bought as a christmas present for my wife, so I could not wait any more. I asked a question here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/862946/unable-to-install-ubuntu-on-acer-aspire-es1-533 and got very promising answer, which unfortunately came too late and I canntot try it, because I do not have the computer anymore.

     

    What I learned is that the installation always fails at the same point - during intsallation of bootloader, when it attempts to register Ubuntu in NVRAM of the UEFI.

     

    I cannot give step by step guide, but following should be in principle a way how to make it work:

     

    1. Install ubuntu without installation of bootloader (from live media run in terminal ubiquity -b command).
    2. This will successfully pass. Then mount the partitions of the newly installed system and change root into it (chroot as explained in many guides accross internet).
    3. Manually install the bootloader for the newly installed system running grub-install with additional parameter --no-nvram, which should skip the registration in UEFI and prevent computer from freezing. Followed by grub-update.
    4. Then copy all installed files from EFI partition's directory /EFI/ubuntu to /EFI/BOOT in the same partition and rename file grubx64.efi in bootx64.efi. This should work, because the UEFI firmware is looking for /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi by defult and loads it automatically (provided that no windows is installed on the system).

    If you are more patient than me, it could be the solution for you. More details can be found under the link I reffered to abouve.

     

    Hope this can help a bit.

  • HarvardNot
    HarvardNot Member Posts: 2 New User

    Ok, I will want a beer from everyone who got helped from my message:

     

     

    You don't need to change to legacy.

    Use Rufus to create a GPT/UEFI compatible USB drive from your Windows 8/10 ISO.

  • Pueseso
    Pueseso Member Posts: 2 New User

    Hi

     

    I have successfully installed Ubuntu 16.04.1 in my laptop ES1-533-C6C1 following Sladek90 advise.

    The only drawback is that it is horribly slow (probably becouse of some bug, have tried a Live-USB with MINT and it was OK...

    This is the full tested process:

     

    -- Boot Ubuntu Live USB

    -- open terminal

    sudo -s

    ubiquity -b

    -- Press Continue testing after installation is over.

     

    --Now we will return to the CLI (  https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall  )

     

    sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt #sda2 is the root partition

    sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/efi

    sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi #sda1 is the efi partition

    for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done

     

    modprobe efivars # make sure this is loaded

     

    -- notice the bootx64 file

    efibootmgr --verbose

     

    -- We will reinstall grub-install for a 64bit version

    apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64

     

    grub-install —no-nvram —root-directory=/mnt

    chroot /mnt

    update-grub

    cd /boot/efi/EFI

    cp -R ubuntu BOOT

    cd BOOT cp grubx64.efi bootx64.efi

     

    -- You are finished, reboot the system.

  • Pueseso
    Pueseso Member Posts: 2 New User

    BTW Looks like Ubuntu is so slow becouse it has no support for my CPu (n3350 Apollo lake) probably becouse of the GPU.

    Anyway installing kernel v4.9.5 solved the problem

    download the amd64 generic version from here (3 files) http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.9.5/

    and dpkg -i *.deb

     

    and solved!!

  • valexact
    valexact Member Posts: 2 New User

    Instrucitions are very good when installing Ubuntu. I tried to install Fedora 25 in similar manner but I did not succeed. I've must me missing some step, so if anyone have the solution please write it here.

  • Sladek90
    Sladek90 Member Posts: 5 New User

    It is not clear what the problem with Fedora 25 you faced, but based on my experience I made in the past I assume the computer hangs during the install process. If this is the case, I think the installer has to be set to install without bootloader (analogous to ubiquity -b in Ubuntu). This option can be chosen in the graphical environment of Anaconda (I do not remember where exactly it is but it is there for sure). The installation will  go through smoothly then (it did for me). Afterwards the rest of procedure should be distribution independent and should work for Fedora as well as for Ubuntu.

  • valexact
    valexact Member Posts: 2 New User

    The problem with Fedora is same as with Ubuntu, it hungs when it comes to the bootloader installation. Fedora bootloader is also Grub2, but it's implementation is not the same as in Ubuntu, so there should be somewhat different procedure for bootloader installation. Someone is for sure enough patient to test it..

  • jack4164
    jack4164 Member Posts: 1 New User

    @HarvardNot

     

    Thanks the GPT comment was the key. Where do I deliver the beer?

  • kaneelman
    kaneelman Member Posts: 1 New User

    Thank you so much, after more than a week of struggle I finally managed to get Ubuntu on my new laptop. One last question though; What 3  files should I get for the kernel?? I installed the image-generic-amd64, but do I also need the header then, to get the speed up

  • kaled_aljabr
    kaled_aljabr Member Posts: 1 New User

    JirkaKonca wrote:

    Hello,

     

    I have problem - I want to install Ubuntu Linux on laptop which has Linput Linux Lite. Problem is, that no device, USB or DVD, can be used to boot, as laptop doesnt even allow such option. Formus say that it works after changing Boot method from UEFI to Legacy, but my BIOS offers only UEFI.

     

    To install Ubuntu i am using .iso file burned to DVD.

     

    Can you help?

     

    Acer_E15_01UEFI-only.jpg

     

    Acer_E15_02Bootmanaget.jpg

     

     



    JirkaKonca wrote:

    Hello,

     

    I have problem - I want to install Ubuntu Linux on laptop which has Linput Linux Lite. Problem is, that no device, USB or DVD, can be used to boot, as laptop doesnt even allow such option. Formus say that it works after changing Boot method from UEFI to Legacy, but my BIOS offers only UEFI.

     

    To install Ubuntu i am using .iso file burned to DVD.

     

    Can you help?

     

    Acer_E15_01UEFI-only.jpg

     

    Acer_E15_02Bootmanaget.jpg

     

     




    Hi ..

    I faced this problem .. the soulotion is :

    You can install win 8 64 bit or win 10 64 bit 

    You must have an image win only 64 bit and usb flash 8 GB burned with programe called ( ‪rufus-2.12 ) 

    choice the GPT and burned 

    .............

    Thats works with me  win 10

    I hope i helped you 

     

    Hello everyone,

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    We also cannot attest to the safety of third party websites.

    Acquiring files through such links is at the user’s own risk.

    [removed direct links to executable files (.exe) or compressed files (.zip) that are not from an Acer domain - please post a landing page instead]

     

  • Sladek90
    Sladek90 Member Posts: 5 New User

    Hi. I have one idea why it possibly did not work with Fedora. Could be that it was not the case, but if you followed the instructions for Ubuntu exactly as they were described here, it is not surprising at all that it did not work. Fedora has different package manager (yum) than Ubuntu has (apt-get) and therefore command

     

    apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64

     

    could not work in Fedora. To do the same in Fedora, following command should have been used instead:

     

    yum install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64

     

    The rest of instructions should be common for both distributions.

  • n4200linux
    n4200linux Member Posts: 1 New User

    I am using an ES1-533-P79T and was(!) running Ubuntu using the install technique detailed here.

     

    I've just updated the BIOS to the latest version and now can't get an install that works.  I don'tg get any errors reported when installing, but on reboot, it fails to find an O/S to boot.

     

    Any thoughts ?

     

    As a related item, the Centos 7 install does work when run from the live install.  You don't need to do any extra steps as detailed here which implies that the install process for Ubuntu is a fixable problem.

     

     

     

     

     

This discussion has been closed.