[PLUG] Installing linux on HP laptop

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

I just realized your problem probably is getting the thing to boot off the
stick in the first place.  That's a chicken-and-egg problem because you have
to boot from a stick so that the existing disk is not active in order to zap
it

If the turning off uefi boot does not work in bios then if it's running
win10 and you can login to it, hold down shift and click restart that will
get you into windows recovery and you might be able to select the boot stick
from there.

In worst case pull the disk, put it in a dock, and wipe it then reinsert it.
Once the bios sees no bootable anything on the disk it will fall through to
the next bootable thing, the usb stick.

Ted


-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG <plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Ted Mittelstaedt
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2025 6:19 AM
To: 'Portland Linux/Unix Group' <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Installing linux on HP laptop

I've run into this before.  In my case I took the cowards way out and turned
off UEFI booting and turned on Legacy booting then installed Ubuntu.  It was
on a server and UEFI booting was unneeded since the system volume was much
smaller than the data volume.  UEFI booting is almost pointless for Linux
since boot sector viruses target windows OS  (I suppose you could write one
that would target a Linux system but I haven't seen one yet) and hardly
anyone creates linunx workstations with 4TB or larger volumes, they use a
fileserver.

The actual problem is discussed here and how to properly correct it with
eifbootmgr:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/325048/cleaning-up-and-changing-the-efi-boot
-order-permanently-using-eifbootmgr

Windows has an analogous program that Windows Setup uses if you install
Windows.  Normally when I install Windows I tell it I'm deleting everything
then Go into their scripted partitioner and delete all partitions including
EFI then select the raw disk, windows recreates everything as well as
updates BIOS.

One trick you can try with a windows boot stick is boot it into windows
recovery, open a command prompt run diskpart, select the primary disk then
"clean" it will wipe all partitions and structures and also I think it wipes
bios too.

There's plenty of other tools that can supposedly fix this:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/efi_boot_editor.html
https://easyuefi.software.informer.com/
https://www.diskgenius.com/how-to/manage-uefi-boot-options.php

My understanding is BIOS is supposed to be reading the boot order/etc out of
the EFI partition but sometimes it seems to not do that but Instead use
something it's saved somewhere.  The EFI tools not only rewrite the EFI
partition they seem to send BIOS commands to BIOS that Change things.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG <plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Rich Shepard
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2025 5:36 AM
To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Installing linux on HP laptop

On Sun, 30 Mar 2025, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

> I  think it's just pressing F9 during boot to get the boot menu on these.

Ted,

I found an HP web page on changing boot order. The page said it could be F2,
F6, or F10 depending on the model. The model number is identified by
entering both serial and product numbers.

In my case it's F10. The laptop lacks separate function keys; they're
associated with the number keys and it took a while to figure out whether I
need to press the Fn key + number key or only the number key. I got into the
BIOS/UEFI setup page but don't recall which key(s) I used.

Changed the boot order by moving the `OS boot manager' default down below
USB Flash drive and USB optical drive, but it still boots into Windows. The
OS boot manager line has a right-pointing solid arrow in front and I haven't
found how to move that to the USB flash drive line nor wether that matters.

Rich