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On Mon, 12 Jul 2021 16:14:29 +0100
comrade meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/07/2021 12:13, fraser kendall wrote:
>
> > But. I dropped the ball on installation. The auto-encryption
> > malarky (help me out please comrade meowski!) is enabled by default
> > on a Lenovo Windows installation, and if it's not disabled (or an
> > external backup of the appropriate unlocking code is made) prior to
> > the Linux installation, booting into Windows won't be possible as
> > the BIOS has been changed. My bad, and although I haven't yet
> > needed to do this, I wouldn't make the same mistake again, just in
> > case...
>
>
> Hmm, I think I see what you mean but let me check, there's a lot of
> moving parts involved here. So by default the laptop turned up with:
>
> Win10 (Home or Pro, that's important)
Pro
> Secure Boot = ON
> BitLocker = ON
> UEFI = ON
> Windows Fast Boot = ON
Yep,yep,yep,yep
>
> It sounds like you left the Windows install in place on the NVME
> drive but then shrunk it to make space for the Linux install right?
yep
> And at that point to get Debian installed+running you would have done:
>
> Secure Boot = OFF
> UEFI = OFF (or in CSM/Legacy/whatever they call it mode)
yep
>
> Furthermore the NVME drive is presumably 4K sectors and GPT mode (not
> MBR).
yep
>
> This would result in a working and bootable Debian system and as you
> say, Windows = noworky anymore.
yep
>
> Sound about right?
Cannot fault it.
>
> This can indeed be fixed in several ways depending on how you want to
> come at it. The easiest way of all is to temporarily revert the
> firmware changes you made to enable Linux working so you can get back
> into the Windows installation again and fix it up so it can coexist
> with Linux.
>
> I have to set systems up the other way, although dual boot machines
> are pretty uncommon these days at least among my clients so it's not
> something I need to do very often. When I do, I make sure to go
> through the admittedly annoying checklist to make sure that all of
> the important stuff can stay set = ON (you want UEFI and Secure Boot
> enabled for both operating systems) to keep Win10 Pro happy and then
> Linux is predictably much easier to deal with and most sane distros
> won't have any problem installing and running alongside it.
This, I have saved for future reference. Thanks
>
> One warning though: Lenovo's firmware is famously... interesting in
> it's implementation. By which I mean buggy, non-standard and
> annoying. You have a silly special key to hammer on to access boot
> menus right? Not sure if your E14 is a more traditional one where you
> hit a weirdly labelled F key or whether you have a special "Lenovo
> button" that you have to use to turn on the laptop instead of the
> regular power button when you want to boot via USB or enter firmware.
> I've got a crappy Lenovo Yoga laptop with one of those.
It's F1, and you gotta be quick.
>At least Lenovo don't ship the system firmware with SuperFish in any more
> though right? Probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had to look that up. Truly awful.
fraser
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