i think something is wrong with my bios

I have an acer e5-511 with version 1.02 bios. dont ask why about 2 years ago i set a password on the hdd. then i got bored with windows and wanted to install linux. wen i went ack into bios to clear the password on the hdd it wouldnt save the changes. i can change the password and that will stay. i know the password is correct because its required on boot and wouldn boot windows it it were wrong. ive tried enabling uefi instead of legacy and ive found that no changes in bios are ever saved and theres no password on it. ive tried pulling the battery and holding the power key etc to no avail. if i try to run the bios update for v10 it reboots windows.

i removed the hdd once and the bios seemed to be unlocked and responsive. what im thinking is that the security chip on the hdd is corrupt or something and locking the bios options that effect it. what ihavent tried is a new hard drive and just toss the old one. the system runs fine as long as im willing to type the password but ive heard that changeing the hard drive may set the sae password into the new hard drive. is this true ? i would like to flash the bios with the drive out but cant find a command line h20 dos bios flash tool. can you point me to one?

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JackE

I strongly advise against trying to flash the BIOS on a working machine. From your description, the BIOS is working as it should in not allowing changes to be saved. What was the factory-installed Windows version? What's Windows version is on it now? Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

Originally it was win 8.1

JackE

Is it still Win8.1? Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

windows 10

JackE

>>>dont ask why about 2 years ago i set a password on the hdd. >>>

OK. I won't ask why. But do you recall setting it before or after the Win10 downgrade? Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

it was an upgrade free from win 8.1 to windows 10 and i set it after win 10

JackE

>>>then i got bored with windows and wanted to install linux. >>>

If you want to keep Win10 with dual boot, then the BIOS must be in UEFI mode. Depending on the distro installation and it's media prep (eg Ubuntu, Mint, etc), you should have to do little more with the BIOS other than remembering your password and making grubx64.efi a trusted bootloader alongside Windows. I can try to walk you thru it if that's your intention. Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

i was wondering where you were going with all that. i got rid of linux years ago. been running nothing but win 10. but what os im running has nothing to do with the fact that when i press f2 and enter bios i cant change any setting because i once set a password on the hard drive....you know it asks for a password at boot and shows the device name, hit enter and enter a password then windows boots or i can hit f2 ?.... the bios is locked into its settings. i can change the drive password but not clear it. so this hard drive is basically controlling the entire bios. for the record uefi doesnt apply because im in legacy mode

JackE

Sorry. Your first post led me to believe this was a recently discovered issue while trying to install Linux. Is the supervisor password option grayed out in legacy mode? If not, try setting a supervisor password. Save settings and exit. Re-boot/re-enter the BIOS menu with the supervisor password and try to clear the HDD password. Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

im sorry to say i tried it 2 ways. first way i reset the supervisor, saved exited and let it boot to windows. shut down , power on f2 and supervisor pass status clear / hdd pass status "set"

second way i set supervisor pass and cleared the hdd pass. f10 to save andexit. boo to windows and shut down. f2 into bios. supervisor status clear hdd status set.

JackE

>>>i removed the hdd once and the bios seemed to be unlocked and responsive.>>>

Open Control Panel. Search "Disk Management" in Admin tools. Do you still see a ~100MB EFI BIOS trusted partition? Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

no i had to replace the original hdd and never got around to creating one because its locked and will only run as fat 32

JackE

Sorry. Your BIOS cannot work properly with a FAT32-formatted HDD under Win10. Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

All that goes in it is the. Contents of a windows DVD right?

alicekelly

one other point. when i switched to linux i put it in legacy mode which doesnt need uefi. after i formatted it off i attempted to build an efi partition (i had saved the files in a zip on a dvd) thats when i first discoverd that i couldnt change the settings
the uefi worked but the bios still wont come out of legacy mode

JackE

Sorry again. With the newer UEFI bootstrap chip in your E5 (vs BIOS in older machines), Linux should've originally been installed under the UEFI bootstrapper, not BIOS, alongside Win8.1 or Win10 from GPT, not MBR, partitioned installation media.

While agreed neither Linux nor Win10 really ***need*** the UEFI bootstrapper, I'm gonna guess that the bootstrapper was set to Legacy BIOS mode because the Linux installation media was MBR, not GPT, partitioned and thus not recognized by UEFI. So eventually both Linux and Win10 got installed under BIOS.

At this point, I can only suggest that you back up your Win10 system as it is now. Then, if you want to try to re-gain full control of the UEFI chip, do a clean Win8.1(preferred) or Win10 installation under UEFI bootstrap, not BIOS, on a GPT partitioned, not MBR, HDD.

Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

i see your point. so i have a distro called knoppix and it has a program called "gparted" it allows one to boot to the dvd and resize partitions.
im thinking ill resize my 1 large partition and give a fat32 1 gig partition at the begining to efi. then go back into windows and do this

Type below command and hit Enter each time:

diskpart

DISKPART>

sel disk 0

When the message "Disk 0 is now the selected disk" shows up, type:

list vol

diskpart will now show the full list of volumes on your PC, find UEFI volume from the list: UEFI partition will be on Volume 2.

Type below command and hit Enter each time:

sel vol 2

assign letter=G: Note: G shall be a unique drive letter which cannot be already used;

When the message "DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point", type below command and hit Enter each time:

exit

cd /d G:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

cd /d G:\Boot\ or cd /d G:\ESD\Windows\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

Note: G is the drive letter you signed to UEFI partition and remember to replace G with UEFI's partition letter.

bootrec /fixboot

ren BCD BCD.bak

bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-us /s x: /f ALL Note: c:\ is the drive where Windows 10/8.1/8 is installed on.

You can also run: bootrec /rebuildbcd > hit Enter;

Type: exit in Command Prompt > Restart PC.

Now UEFI boot is fixed and Windows 10/8.1/8 can be boot again.

then lastly switch the whole scheme to gpt with gparted from my boot dvd of knoppix.
i know this is lengthly, i mainly posted this in case anyone else needed it.
dont give up on me. ill see you when im done

JackE

If you use Microsoft's free generic Win8.1 or Win10 installation media creation tool https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media , it should automatically do all required HDD/SSD GPT-partitioning & NTFS formatting but may require downloading some ACER-specific E5 drivers. The ~$45 ACER-specific Win8.1 installation media would do the same job plus automatically install all the correct drivers based on your machine's serial number id (SNID). They both work best under a UEFI bootstrap.

If it were my E5, I'd install Win8.1 instead of Win10 for two reasons. (1) First, Microsoft's new Windows lifecycle policies guarantees Win8.1 compatibility & maintenance support till 2023. Win10 does NOT guarantee much more than a year bOeyond a major update release if it doesn't disable your machine. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet . (2) The particular E5 was fully factory-qualified for Win8.1, not Win10 and Win10's rapid-fire heavy-handed updating policies over which there is little user control.

Once installed and up-and-running to my satisfaction, I'd then shrink the Win8.1 partition using Win8.1 Disk Management tool to make room for a Linux installation alongside Win8.1. My choice would be a Cinnamon-flavored Mint 18.3 installation from a GPT-partitioned FAT32 USB stick because it has one of the best driver compatibilities with my UEFI bootstrap machines and its GUI can be more easily manipulated to my satisfaction than either Win8.1 or Win10. In fact, Windows is rarely used on them any more.

Jack E/NJ

alicekelly

no longer have the 8.1 license. ive never gotten the creation tool to do what your saying. ill look into it

JackE

Windows licenses are now embedded on a mainboard chip and tied to your machine's serial number id(SNID). They are no longer on the original HDD. Accordingly both Win8.1 and Win10 are licensed to run on your machine. Jack E/NJ

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